READ: Guillermo Del Toro loves "The Counselor"
It took a Mexican artist to understand this film's significance…and he's spot on:
INTERVIEW by Mike Fleming Jr
October 16, 2015
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DEADLINE: Ridley Scott recently told Deadline that despite its failure to find an audience, he dearly loves his Cormac McCarthy-scripted film The Counselor. You’ve told me that aside from immersing yourself in your genre world, you watch certain movies over and over for inspiration. Why is The Counselor one of them?
DEL TORO: Here’s what I love. Cormac McCarthy’s writing is so true to itself. It doesn’t want to comply with the screenplay manuals and it doesn’t try to conform to the conventional breaks of the three-act structure. Nevertheless, the movie has a really nightmarishly escalating structure. It is beautifully structured and I can tell you, as somebody who first hand has suffered the devastating consequences of violence more than once, the movie captures three of the fundamental stages of a human’s life. You meet the counselor at the moment where he is at his most shielded and placid, when he is buying the diamond and is all but oblivious to the transcendentally destructive power of violence. He very glibly dabbles into that on the second stage, where he’s very ambitious and all about a future life with a new bride and newly acquired wealth. All through that journey, the counselor meets these guides into the underworld who warn him. Beware, here there be dragons, and the counselor ignores all those signals and signposts. Then the movie tells you, once you cross this line, the world as you know it disappears. For anyone that has not experienced violence, this may seem like an intellectual or literary conceit. I know, from a very painful place, what it is to lose people you love.
DEADLINE: You’ve said that while you lived in Mexico your father was kidnapped and held for months before you paid a ransom to bring him back. Is that what you mean?
DEL TORO: I am talking about both in the past with my father, and more recently I have experienced people being taken and disappearing. I can tell you the movie articulates the cosmic power of violence to destroy one’s concept of the universe in a way that nobody else has and nobody else will. It is not post-modern fascination with violence where we want to play gangster by being tough. This is a movie that tells you violence is the destroyer of worlds. It will scorch your earth and you will be banned and it has an almost Old Testament power that is unique. And, very sadly, it is out of touch with what audiences want.
DEADLINE: For all its star power, the movie failed to capture an audience…
DEL TORO: But we need to not be confused in these times by equating popularity with quality. And when a movie comes in that is as well-thought and as contemplative as this one, we owe it to ourselves to honor that creation with the time and attention it demands and not watch it like one would an in-flight entertainment movie or a Sunday outing. It’s a true, powerful meditation on violence.
DEADLINE: I find myself vexed that Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk hasn’t caught on. When I saw it in 3D Imax, it left me sweating and feeling I’d never seen that on a movie screen before. The way Zemeckis put you on that wire, 110 stories up between those Twin Towers…
DEL TORO: I think there is a certainty you have as a filmmaker, that when you raise your child to be itself, as we were discussing, the child will grow even after you’re gone. There are movies like The Walk or The Counselor that one makes with the hope of finding an audience like a message in a bottle will find the shore and be read in the right way, with the right amount of pure love. With most Zemeckis movies in the last couple of decades — including Flight which I find enormously rewarding — I see a master, talking to me and talking to everyone that wants to hear. We have a history of not always listening to those that are right. We’ve even crucified them. I don’t think that people with something to say are necessarily the same people that are heard. Zemeckis is one of the most singular talents working in film. A monumental talent that we take for granted in a way that we shouldn’t.
DEADLINE: What other movies have obsessed you?
DEL TORO: I have a handful I watch over and over. The Big Lebowski is one. Catch Me if You Can. Duel. Every day, I watch one or two movies and those are almost like symphonic music or favorite songs. The one that accidentally entered that realm lately is No Country for Old Men because I was reviewing it to interview the Coens. And all of a sudden that one started to echo a lot the way The Counselor and some of the ideas of the world. I started to watch them back to back. Road Warrior is another.
DEADLINE: You mean George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, which came out this summer and was another film that didn’t do as well as deserved, given its ballsy, audacious vision?
DEL TORO: I meant the original, because it was so important when it came out. Now, Fury Road is an amazing feat, just an amazing spectacle. It’s choreographed and orchestrated in a way that is like a caravan, a moving three-ring circus of action. It’s almost Cirque du Soleil, the most acrobatic action film ever made. What I love most of all is the fable of a filmmaker who remains untamed. This guy is over 70 years old and, very much like Ridley Scott, he keeps responding to his own impulses. These are guys delivering some of their best work at an age where most people have retired. These are grand masters. I find the exuberance of George’ Miller’s work to be the same that comes out in an unexpected way in The Wolf Of Wall Street with Marty Scorsese. You would believe these movies were made by a new director who is 22 years old.
DEADLINE: Quentin Tarantino has said he’ll retire soon, before he begins repeating himself and his next movie cannot be his best one. Are you saying the accumulation of craftsmanship skills and creative recklessness can keep you from that decline?
DEL TORO: I think so. What is very beautiful in my opinion is that you can get that second wind if you are given the chance to work with a certain continuity. These are people who are still working at the top of their game, in a language that was always their own. They don’t betray that. I for one actually hope and expect that Quentin changes his mind.
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