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Cronos: An Understanding Of Transnational Fantasies And Twisted Genres

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Guillermo Del Toro’s Cronos and The Human Condition: An Understanding of Transnational Fantasies and Twisted Genres. Guillermo Del Toro started directing films in the early 1990s as part of Mexico’s state-funded cinematic revival. His film, Cronos (1993) was the first of many cult classics to come. What makes Del Toro’s style stand out the most is his interest in fairytales. Along with the fantastic, his films typically have an emphasis on politics and cultural identities. With this, Del Toro creates and directs stories in which the daily life and family dynamics of others can be explored. Despite this seemingly comfortable and lighthearted framework, Del Toro demonstrates his mastery of horror by disrupting these familiarities of place and identity. By having a human understanding of the scene, the inhuman, or monstrous, becomes more prominent. Despite the traditional lens of horror, which …show more content…

With Cronos in particular, viewers are exposed to the daily life of the Gris family. In particular, we focus on Jess Gris and his granddaughter Aurora. Despite his descent into horror, the duo’s compassion for one another throughout the film only solidifies Del Toro’s consistent admiration for monsters. His favorable outlook is potentially a composite of varying stories, however, in his comments on Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus he explains that the story “illuminated the reason I loved monsters, my kinship with them, and showed me how deep, how life-changing, a monster parable could be--how it could function as art and how it could reach across distance and time and become a palliative to solitude and pain” (Guillermo Del Toro). The consistent bending of genres while also subverting common tropes is a staple of his iconic style. Once again referencing his debut film, Cronos, vampire myth and Frankenstein are both combined to create a

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