What is a ghost? Is it a memory? A trauma? A fear? Is it a warning? A protector? Or a destroyer? Guillermo del Toro’s gothic masterpiece is a meditation on the nature of ghosts and monsters while being haunted by a few ghosts of its own. As it celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year, The Devil’s Backbone remains as potent as ever and a supreme example of del Toro’s mastery of the genre.

The story follows Carlos (Fernando Tielve), the son of a hero killed on the front lines of the Spanish Civil War, who is left in the care of Carmen (Marisa Paredes) and Dr. Casares (Frederico Luppi) who run the Santa Lucia orphanage. They are sympathetic to the cause of the leftist freedom fighters but know that the fascist Nationalists will soon arrive. We meet several other boys including the friendly Gálvez (Adrián Lamana) and Owl (Javier González Sánchez), so called because he doesn’t speak much but “stares a lot.” There is also a group of apparent bullies lead by Jaime (Iñigo Garcés), a slightly older boy. Early on, we catch our first glimpses of the ghost of Santi (Junio Valverde), a young boy who died of a head wound and was hidden in a pool of dirty water below the orphanage, like “an insect in amber.” Santi is the perfect blend of beauty and fright that characterize so many of del Toro’s “monsters.” As is so often the case in his work, however, the true monster of the film is a human, the young and handsome Jacinto played by Eduardo Noriega.

He is engaged to the beautiful and innocent Conchita (Irene Visedo), who we learn Jaime has a schoolboy crush on. Though Jacinto feigns love for her, he is all the while having an affair with headmistress Carmen but also attempting to double cross her by gaining access to her safe filled with bars of gold. Jacinto is an abuser and a manipulator, but also a scared child—a weak, greedy, cowardly man hiding under a façade of machismo. He is “the man without warmth,” that he reads about from the back of a childhood photograph of himself late in the film. His greed and the ghost of his most cowardly act are ultimately his undoing. 

The character of Jacinto is pitted against his opposite, the compassionate, loyal, and brave Dr. Casares to illustrate an important theme of the film—what it truly means to be a man. Jacinto is the embodiment of the toxic form of masculinity that oppresses and inflicts pain but runs and hides when faced with real responsibility. Casares on the other hand does what is right even in the face of self-sacrifice and fear. He is a man of true courage and becomes the ultimate role model for the boys under his charge. At first, Jaime is presented as a youthful version of Jacinto but chooses a different path when his moment of coming of age arrives. Taking on the mantle of the fallen Dr. Casares, he becomes an inspiring leader and a man of action. Carlos, likewise, learns well from Casares that sometimes ghosts need not be feared, especially when there are real, human monsters in the world. 

Dr. Casares is a stoic and enigmatic man throughout much of the film. He is deeply in love with Carmen but continues to suffer in silence. He knows of her affair with Jacinto but remains forever loyal to her. He was deeply in love with her even before the loss of her husband. The touching final scene between Carmen and Casares is one of the most profoundly moving of twenty-first century cinema. After being betrayed by Jacinto, who causes an explosion in the orphanage, Carmen is mortally wounded. Casares feigns that he will operate to save her life but knows it is hopeless. To ease her pain, he recites a poem to her that ends, “be near me when I fade away to point the term of human strife, the twilight of eternal day, and the low, dark verge of life.” He completes his recitation even after she has quietly slipped from this world to the next…if there is one. He doesn’t seem so sure.

Earlier in the film, Dr. Casares voices a deeply human fear with the line, “I always thought there’d be an ‘afterwards.’ There is no afterwards.” In this line, he is directly referring to the war, but the sentiment applies to the more metaphysical fears as well. The film itself contradicts his worries with the very existence of its ghosts. One is a spirit that remains to exact a revenge, but the other stays behind as a protector. Though the film is surrounded by the questions of death, it remains hopeful of something more. It often balances on a razors edge between hope and despair as tragedy after tragedy occurs. In the end, however, I feel the film leans into hope. Hope of life. Hope of freedom. Hope of new beginnings. 

As the boys walk through the doors of Santa Lucia, they do so in bright sunlight and their overseer and protector watches over them as they go. They face the unknown world ahead as men who have learned well from what they have experienced. They go into it to fight against the kinds of injustices they have witnessed, but do so having observed true goodness from Dr. Casares and Carmen, who have sacrificed everything for them.

As an American who does not speak Spanish, is not immersed in the culture depicted, and has only a cursory knowledge of the Spanish Civil War, the film contains social, cultural, and political nuances that will likely remain forever out of my reach. But it is these enigmatic elements of the film, as well as its universal themes of life, death, and what may or may not lie beyond, that continue to draw me back time and again. The Devil’s Backbone is about tragedy and the evidence of it that surround us daily. It is a reminder of the constant truth that “in the midst of life we are in death.” These are ideas that touch us all as humans and tap into our collective insecurities. No matter our faith or lack thereof, no human can ever be entirely sure of what lies beyond. 

Ultimately, the intricacies of its plot are subordinate to the meditations upon the questions posed at the opening of the film and reiterated at the end: 

“What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? A moment of pain, perhaps. Something dead which still seems to be alive. An emotion suspended in time. Like a blurred photograph. Like an insect trapped in amber.”

The Devil’s Backbone is a movie filled with all kinds of ghosts, though Santi and one other character I will not reveal are the only literal ones. In the center of the courtyard of the orphanage is a rusting defused bomb. Jaime warns Carlos that it is not dead. That if you put your ear to it “you can hear it ticking,” calling the sound its heartbeat. This, along with the slugs that litter the damp lower depths of the orphanage are reminders of the night Santi died. Dr. Casares’ office is filled with haunting specimens—fetuses in jars of amber liquid, one with an exposed “devil’s” backbone. Carmen wears a wooden leg but still feels the pain of her phantom limb, as well as the loss of her husband, whose absence looms like a shadow over the film. One of the great specters of the film is the encroaching Spanish Civil War itself. The film takes place in 1939 just as Franco’s fascist government was about to take over the nation, which it would rule for over 35 years. 

In many ways, the film itself is haunted by cinematic ghosts of movies past. The lone structure of the orphanage surrounded by golden fields is reminiscent of Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978). The secret hidden below the dirty water of a boarding school pool brings Cluzot’s Les Diaboliques (1955) to mind. Above all, and by del Toro’s own admission, the film borrows elements, particularly in structure, from perhaps the greatest of all Spanish films, Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), a film that is itself haunted by the spirit of Frankenstein (1931). The film also resets the trappings of the gothic from dark, misty moors and castles of crumbling stone to sun-soaked plains and oxidizing metal and concrete structures. None of these references are particularly overt but subtle and woven into the fabric of del Toro’s singular vision.

Questions often arise with films like this and its remarkable companion Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) of “what is it all about?” When it comes down to it, the film is about mood, atmosphere, and feelings it evokes as well as the questions it raises in each viewer. The greatest strength of so many gothics, including this neo-gothic, is that those great questions of life and death are left up to us to struggle with. The Devil’s Backbone can be viewed as a very sad and dark story. It can also be seen as a coming-of-age tale and a story of mentorship, loyalty, and good overcoming evil. Its ending is one of great faith in the young boys who must carry the future as well as hope for their success. Though far less grand than many of del Toro’s other films, The Devil’s Backbone remains a quiet and intimate masterwork. One that is remarkably beautiful, poetic, and personal. 

What is a ghost? Is it any of the things I mentioned in the beginning, or is it something more? Does it exist now or is it far in the future? Perhaps ghosts are memories, or tragedies doomed to repeat themselves. Perhaps they are destroyers or protectors. But then maybe it just depends on how we look at them. Maybe, in the end, we are all destined to become ghosts to someone else—it remains up to us what kinds of ghosts we become.