Hellboy II

Watched this sequel with a friend yesterday afternoon. Hellboy II: The Golden Army is a 2008 comic book film based on the fictional Dark Horse Comics character Hellboy. The film is directed by Guillermo del Toro and is a sequel to the 2004 film Hellboy, which del Toro also directed. Ron Perlman reprises his role as the titular character.

For all the monstrous supernature on display, the film's concerns are always rooted in the human. Even as they fight the creatures at war with the human world, Hellboy and his compatriots are thanklessly rejected by the bulk of greedy, consumptive humanity. In keeping with these ideas, the fearsome villain is also sympathetic to a degree, in that he believes he is protecting his kind from extinction His sister argues instead, "If our days have ended, let us all fade." These points come to a head when Hellboy, clutching a baby in his tail, fights the forest god; Nuada turns up to ask Hellboy why he should bother to save those who reject him when he could help wipe them out and live freely among the supernatural creatures.

The film itself is lovely, a breathless feast of fantasy anchored by an authentic humanism. It is the product of a director in complete command of his medium and its ability to transmit the contents of his subconscious. Del Toro articulates the ineffable. A late arrival by death, its wings rimmed with eyes, its teeth impossibly subtle and white, speaks to the idea that the picture is about ultimate subjects and the indelible importance of small moments. When Abe's immortal beloved Princess Luala, sister of the fiend, reads from Alfred Lord Tennyson's "In Memoriam", the part she reports certainly isn't the side a multitude of are familiar with - but if you recognize of the piece, you appreciate there is a portion that speaks to it being better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Hellboy II is more than spectacle, although it is top notch spectacle - more as opposed to pop art dissertation, though it is that, too. Hellboy II is a film absolutely of this time which overly speaks in timeless images of Catholic grotesquerie and pre-Christian iconography, alive in the fire of invention and flights of fancy. It's not Del Toro's masterpiece (that distinction is still Pan's Labyrinth's), but it is greater amount of model of an unusual artist white-knuckling the crest of his genius and, for a while at least, focusing it to these fine, animate points of lush colour and sentient light.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson is my favourite poet, ever. And for a brief glimpse of his In Memoriam recited in this movie, please see here and here.