Guillermo del Toro explains why George Miller is “a cinema god”
Looking up to the titans of cinema isn’t just a pastime for cinemagoers but for esteemed directors, too. No matter your position in the imagined hierarchy of Hollywood, from customer to creator and beyond, so much time has now passed since the dawn of cinema that almost every living person will have a memory of a movie that has forever imprinted on their brains. That can certainly be considered the case for Guillermo del Toro.
Del Toro is a modern movie master. A uniquely positioned storyteller, del Toro has delivered a range of genre-defining pictures, while Pan’s Labirynth might be considered his masterwork, he won ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Production Design’ and ‘Best Original Score’ for the 2018 period fantasy romance, The Shape of Water.
The Mexican director frequently revisits recurring themes throughout his filmography, such as Catholic doctrine, unconventional love, and the interplay between the mundane and the fantastical. His 12 feature films are rich with captivating motifs, and his upcoming 13th film, an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, is poised to carry on this tradition. But while he may seem like a unique prospect, he too was shaped and influenced by the silver screen heroes he watched as a young boy.
But, being a filmmaker, it wasn’t those on the screen that delighted del Toro as he grew up and began to find his feet in his craft. Soon, he would look to the directors of movies as his most important influences and even went as far as to name one moviemaker as a directorial deity.
George Miller may not have his name saddled alongside the Hollywood greats like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese or Stanley Kubrick, but for del Toro, there are few who enthused him more than the director of Mad Max. Speaking in an interview with Bright Wall/Dark Room, del Toro said: “That’s a guy who works at every level. He’s firing on all cylinders. To me, Miller exists in the Olympian category; he’s a cinema god for me.”
While Miller’s 1987 fantasy comedy, The Witches of Eastwick, might seem like a clear connection to Del Toro’s body of work, it was the preceding series focusing on the dystopian world of ‘Mad Max’ that would truly ignite the director’s burning passion for cinema. Miller’s legendary series, consisting of a uniquely placed trilogy, would be a pivotal point for del Toro’s fascination with film: “I remember being a teenager and seeing Max Rockatansky step out of his patrol and walk towards the camera and the camera was doing a push-in and a jib-up at the same time, you know? It was a dolly and a jib, a little crane up to him as he removes his glasses, and it’s purely camera, purely the choice of lens, the choice of angle, the movement—it’s a ballet. His portion of Mad Max 3 in the Thunderdome is pure ballet.”
Del Toro has now garnered himself a position as one of the more revered members of the Hollywood community. While his movies still sit proudly on the peripheries of the mainstream, the Mexican director creates works that feel entirely aligned with his vision for movie making. He has now become one of the names up in lights, inspiring a new generation. But, in the presence of George Miller’s legacy, del Toro is still an excited teenager worshipping at the feet of a directorial god.
