CRONOS
A Film Review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Federico Luppi, Ron Perlman, Claudio Brook, Tamara Shanath, Margarita Isabel. Screenplay/Director: Guillermo del Toro.
Horror films with any semblance of wit or style are so rare that I'm tempted to be even warmer in my embrace of CRONOS than my head tells me to be. This Mexican import puts a unique spin on its tale of a search for eternal life, features some extremely arresting imagery and has a nicely twisted sense of humor. Yet as much as I admired the artistry of CRONOS, I couldn't help but notice a gaping hole at the center, namely a central character who steadfastly refused to engender any sympathy. A viewer willing to overlook its lack of heart will be rewarded by a project full of a new director's excitement at being allowed to realize his vision.
CRONOS opens with a narration describing the efforts of a 14th century alchemist to find the secret to eternal life. In our own time, that secret has fallen into the hands of antique dealer Jesus Gris (Federico Luppi), in the form of a mysterious golden egg called the cronos device. After unwittingly activating it, a change begins to come over Jesus which worries his granddaughter Aurora (Tamara Shanath). And his transformation is not the only dilemma facing Jesus. Dying industrialist Dieter de la Guardia (Claudio Brook) also knows of the existence of the cronos device, and wants to use its power to save himself. He sends his brutish American nephew Angel (Ron Perlman), who covets an inheritance from his uncle, to obtain the device--a quest which proves exceedingly difficult.
Thanks to the half-dozen or so credits which precede the title, CRONOS reportedly boasts the second highest budget in Mexican film history (behind only LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE), and Guillermo del Toro leaves it all on the screen. True, the make-up effects seem cheesy by modern standards, but elsewhere CRONOS sports a high polish. The art direction team of Brigitte Broch and Maria Figueroa have created some dynamic sets, most notably Dieter's antiseptic living quarters, filled with dangling statues and jars containing Dieter's excised tumors. Also noteworthy is the cronos device itself, and del Toro's creative use of it, including showing its elaborate inner workings. Director of photography Guillermo Navarro shoots the film with an emphasis on big spaces, and the result is a deliciously spooky atmosphere.
For all its visual flair, CRONOS may be most satisfying on the level of del Toro's off-beat sense of humor. There is a glorious perversity to a scene in which Jesus finds himself inexplicably compelled to perform a unique clean-up job after a gentleman with a nosebleed in a public restroom, and to the image of Aurora clearing out her toybox to serve a purpose for which it probably was never intended. There is also a quirky performance by Daniel Jimenez Cacho as a mortician who takes inordinate pride in his craft, and Ron Perlman (of TV's "Beauty and the Beast") as the slightly dim-witted goon obsessed with getting a nose job. Guillermo del Toro manages to put a lot of bite into his script, in more ways than one.
There is that one big problem, though: Jesus Gris is completely bland. Del Toro doesn't connect Jesus' fate with his character in any noticeable way; in fact, it might be a stretch to say that Jesus has a character. With his ultra-symbolic name, you would assume that there might be some attempt to go deeper into the psychology of his "resurrection." But there is no sense of who he was before his experience with the cronos device, and more early characterization would have been extremely useful. I also had problems with Aurora, whose placid response to bizarre events is stylized but ultimately tedious. Of course, style is ultimately CRONOS' strongest asset, and it's very strong at that.
Guillermo del Toro has said that he only wants to make horror films. With a bit of seasoning as a writer, these projects could prove well worth anticipating for the thinking fright fan.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 cronos devices: 7.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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