Time proves ‘Cronos’ del Toro’s masterwork

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Staff Writer
Film festivals are excellent ways to see new films that rarely get distribution to mainstream movie theatres, retrospective screenings of early works by major directors and/or older films that don’t even show up on classic film channels and aren’t carried in brick-and-mortar video stores. Cities like Fargo that are lucky enough to have a theater devoted to alternative cinema provide more opportunities than most, but still can’t show everything. Film enthusiasts must often seek out off-beat titles on their own through video.

Luckily, just within the past year, an increasing number of such films have been getting thoughtfully-prepared Blu-ray releases from companies like the Criterion Collection, Kino-Lorber, Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series and the British Film Institute. These make it possible not only to see the films, but to see them in virtually the same quality as a theatrical screening and have access to insightful bonus features that set them in a critical/historical context equivalent to in-depth study for a film school class.

Mexican director Guillermo del Toro is best-known among mainstream American moviegoers for his genre action-horror pictures “Mimic” (1997), “Blade II” (2002) and “Hellboy” (2004) and broke through to more sophisticated audiences with the multi-Oscar-nominated “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006). His very first feature, however, the Mexican-made “Cronos” (1993), is a thoughtful, mulit-layered metaphoric horror-fantasy that remains arguably his best and certainly deserves wider recognition. “Cronos” came out on Blu-ray last December from Criterion.

“Cronos” deals with such themes as time (hence the title), decay and death, the desire for immortality, greed, addiction, self-sacrifice, the complexity of human relationships, religious ritual and more, all in the guise of what is essentially a vampire film, although it never uses the word “vampire.” Like the recent “Let Me In” and its Swedish source, “Let the Right One In,” it focuses on characters more than thrills, meticulously establishing details of their lives and their surroundings that reinforce the motifs symbolizing various issues the director brings up. Some of those are direct references in the plot and others are evoked through careful control of color, props and image composition.

The basic plot concerns a medieval alchemist’s invention of an insect-shaped device that is able to prolong life, and the accidental discovery of that device centuries later by an aging antiques dealer and his quiet, alienated little granddaughter. Unfortunately a wealthy, dying industrialist is ruthlessly searching for the device, leading to the film’s few action sequences. Ron Perlman stars as the industrialist’s crude American nephew who does his dirty work and is ironically named Angel de la Guardia. The cast is uniformly excellent, as for his first picture del Toro was able to get legendary Spanish-language stars Federico Luppi and Claudio Brook.

An amazingly dense film (the director was only 21 when he started writing the script and 28 when he filmed it), “Cronos” is less a horror film than it is an adult fairytale, an approach del Toro continued in “Pan’s Labyrinth.” The film is an engrossing exploration of human nature with a pervasive gothic, melancholy mood, but an ultimately satisfying (though certainly non-Hollywood) resolution. “Cronos” was a huge hit in Mexico, winning numerous awards there and at various international festivals (including Cannes), but never managed to achieve much success in the United States.

Criterion’s high-definition transfer to Blu-ray is superb, supervised by the director and cinema­tographer, and it has a fine DTS-HD stereo soundtrack in Spanish and some English, with English subtitles. There is a very good array of bonus features, including two audio commentaries (recorded in 2002 for the 10th-anniversary DVD), interviews with the director and stars, a stills gallery, a trailer, a featurette with del Toro conducting a tour of his horror-fantasy memorabilia collection, and an amusing 1987 short horror-fantasy he shot as a teenager but finally finished last year. There’s also a 44-page booklet with cast, credits, an appreciative analytical essay and excerpts from del Toro’s preproduction notes he made to explain the characters’ backstories and symbolic visual motifs for the cast and crew.

Possibly his most personal film to date (the director’s commentary reveals many connections to his childhood and his general philosophy), “Cronos” also displays themes and motifs that show up in del Toro’s later work. It’s essential viewing for devotees of horror and of artistic self-expression. “CRONOS” on Blu-ray – Movie:  A / Video:  A+ / Audio:  A / Extras:  A

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