When I was a child, I was raised Catholic. Somewhere, I didn't fit with the saints and holy men. I discovered the monsters - in Boris Karloff, I saw a beautiful, innocent creature in a state of grace, sacrificed by sins he did not commit.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the complex nature of morality and innocence, particularly in the context of childhood beliefs and the discovery of deeper truths.
Guillermo Del Toro's quote delves into the struggle of fitting into conventional societal or religious ideals during childhood. It highlights a profound realization that, instead of purely identifying with traditional heroes or saints, he found beauty and grace in misunderstood figures, like monsters, who represent innocence sacrificed by the flaws of humanity. This perspective challenges the binary notions of good and evil, revealing the complexity of human experience.
In practice
In a discussion about how classic literature often portrays misunderstood characters, one might quote Del Toro to emphasize the beauty in complexity.
I don't try to sanction other people's joy in monsters. I mean, I think the fact is, humor, fantasy - you know, like fear, desire or laughter - create genres of their own: comedy, melodrama, or erotic films or horror films... The boundaries cannot be defined. It's to each his own.
As a director, I design every movie to be true to itself, and damn it if they like it, and damn it if they don't.
If you ask me, I alternate between truly bizarre, what you would call 'Hollywood' movies and truly bizarre, what you would call 'arthouse' movies.
But I think we are seeing a resurgence of the graphic ghost story like The Others, Devil's Backbone and The Sixth Sense. It is a return to more gothic atmospheric ghost storytelling.
The saddest journey in the world is the one that follows a precise itinerary. Then you're not a traveler. You're a f@@king tourist.
When you start with Super 8, you are everything. You're the DP, the sound man, the effects guy. And what I started understanding, by working for other people, is that the best type of director is someone who rose through the ranks.
But the problem is to make the soul into a monster
I'm happy to respect authority when it's genuine authority, based on moral or intellectual or even technical superiority. I'm eager to follow a hero if we can find one. But I tend to resist or evade any kind of authority based merely on the power to coerce. Government, for example. The Army tried to train us to salute the uniform, not the man. Failed. I will salute the man, maybe, if I think he's worthy of it, but I don't salute uniforms anymore.
In the total expanse of human life there is not a single square inch of which the Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare, 'That is mine!'.
My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have... an ambition of transcendence.
The world did not have me in mind; it had no mind. It was a coincidental collection of things and people, of items, an I myself was one such item...the things in the world did not necessarily cause my overwhelming feelings; the feelings were inside me, beneath my skin, behind my ribs, withing my skull. They were even, to some extent, under my control.
Already, he was dreaming of a refined solitude, a comfortable desert, a motionless ark in which to seek refuge from the unending deluge of human stupidity.
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