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Hellboy
is not your usual devil. True, he is horned and as red
as the flames of hell, but he does good. With that
assurance, Hellboy fires off to entertainment heaven, a
hero’s tale in the guise of a full-blown monster film.
We first
met Hellboy in 2004, in a film that introduced us to
this red baby with one hand that looked like it was made
of stone. The infant survives the destruction of a site
that was being run by Rasputin, a Russian mystic. The
evil team was working on a project that aimed to bring
back to earth the Seven Gods of Chaos. The American
government sent an army to destroy them. Out of that
destruction was “born” Hellboy. Interestingly enough,
the film was based on the Dark Horse comics, entitled
Hellboy: The Seed of Destruction.
The
whole gang is back in Hellboy II: The Golden Army:
Abe Sapien, a fish-man; Liz Sherman, a pyrokinetic; and
Hellboy, still loving his Babe Ruth chocolates. Added to
this fantastic group is the ectoplasmic Johann Strauss.
Prof. Trevor Bruttenholm is still around, the “father”
of Hellboy. If one has any doubt as to the humanity of
Hellboy, it is Professor Bruttenholm who provides that.
Heroes
always have origins. These beginnings matter a lot. The
film sees this and starts the narrative by bringing us
back to a Christmas in the 1950s. Hellboy is a young
child. He is asking that he be tucked to bed with a
story. Professor Bruttenholm tells him the story of King
Balor, the King of Elves. The king owns the Golden Army,
a force described as “70 times 70 soldiers.” The Golden
Army goes out on a rampage and almost annihilates the
humans. King Balor did not like this and he set up an
agreement between the humans and the nonhumans. King
Balor’s son, Prince Nuada, did not like the treaty
between them and the humans. He went on exile. The crown
that was going to set in motion the Golden Army was
broken into three parts: one part went to the humans;
the two other parts were kept by the mythical beings.
The separation of the three parts was aimed at keeping
the Golden Army buried forever.
You
guessed it. Hellboy’s new adventure involves this Golden
Army. And the scheme of Prince Nuada to go into war with
humans. I can tell you, of course, that the prince will
be able to get one part of the crown being auctioned as
an artifact of a lost civilization. I can tell you, too,
that this act will kickoff the chase and investigation
that will take our heroes in and out of the world of
enchantment and the space of reality until we are not
able to tell one from the other anymore. What I cannot
tell you—you have to be there to see them—are the marvel
of images created by the filmmakers that challenge our
everyday notion of dimension, depth, grotesquerie.
In the
auction house, the tooth fairy is given a new face.
These are tiny winged creatures with near skeletal
figures and razor-sharp teeth. When they attack a body,
they go first for the teeth, thus the name. There goes
our fairy tales.
Hellboy
II
does really more to shatter our old beliefs about many
things: the difference between good and evil; the
appearance of monsters and nonmonsters; and, finally,
the boundaries between enchantment and reality.
Hellboy
himself is a mighty contradiction in terms of
appearance. He has horns but he is on the side of the
good. He is ugly by any standard but he has a charm, a
sense of humor. At the beginning of the film, Hellboy is
undergoing some relationship stresses with his
girlfriend, Liz, over the mess that their home has
become. Soon, Hellboy would discover why Liz is getting
crabby.
A PSP
fan, Lu, told me those who follow the life of Hellboy
are really caught in the story of his life. I say this
because Hellboy II: The Golden Army, like the
first Hellboy, can be read from so many points, at many
levels. One can begin with a surface reading and just
enjoy the battle of the titans. But one need not stay in
this area forever, the filmmakers made sure of that.
A seed,
for example, that sprouts into a gigantic plant is no
more toxic than it is a poignant lesson of nature.
Prince Nuada asks Hellboy if it is right for him to
destroy that plant, when it is the last of its kind, and
it is really about the magic of nature. At this point,
too, Prince Nuada poses a question that will haunt us
and, I believe, lead us to more sequels and more fun:
what side will Hellboy take, the side of humans or that
of mythical beings?
This
puzzle on the being of Hellboy continues when he faces
the Angel of Death, a being with wings that look like
the spread feathers of a peacock, with eyes on both
sides. There, Liz is asked to choose between saving
Hellboy, who is revealed to be the destroyer of
humankind, or killing him in order to spare the world.
Watch the film and find out the love story in this
amazing film. Along the way, experience a psychic love
between Princess Nuala and Abe Sapien. Discover kinship
as imagined between Prince Nuada and Princess Nuala. For
every wound that the prince gets, the princess also
suffers the same pain and sees the same oozing of blood.
Under
the Brooklyn Bridge is the Troll Market, a collection of
beings that is a paradise for cosplayers, a
trick-or-treat universe. If that is not enough, the
discovery of the Golden Army under a field of ancient
stones and hills can fulfill one’s fantastic desire to
listen to a story that is just going on and on, with
beings growing bigger and bigger and with actions that
get more possible as they look more impossible.
Behind
this fantasyland oozing with guilt and conscience is the
director Guillermo del Toro, repeating the resplendent
population of his Pan’s Labyrinth as he shares
his antiwar fable and fact about the nature of evil.
Selma Blair as Liz is our only hold to human form in
this film, except when she is aflame. The other actors
are lost in the prosthetics but it is the wonder of this
tale that we somehow see through the mutations the true
feel of the human skin and heart. |
