THe Book of Life | Sub Cultured

The Book of Life is a charming treat worthy of your attention. I beg you, please see this film! It’s endearing, and well, deserves your support. Please don’t miss this one just because it does not sport mouse ears.

Produced by Guillermo del Toro and directed by Jorge R. Gutierrez, and written by Gutierrez and Douglas Langdale, The Book of Life is at its core a colorful, exuberant and charming folktale about Mexican culture and traditions. Informative and entertaining, the end result is a film with a snappy overall rather puckish quality that fits the festive traditions it explores.

The film, a framed story told by museum tour guide Mary Beth (Christina Applegate) to a diverse small group of initially unenthusiastic kids, is centered around three friends from a small village called San Angel; Manolo (Emil-Bastien Bouffard ,Diego Luna), Maria (Genesis Ochoa, Zoe Saldana), and Joaquín (Elias Garza, Channing Tatum). Manolo comes from a long line of torero or bullfighters, but he is kind and sensitive and would rather sing and play music like his deceased mother did. Joaquín is the scrappy and athletic orphaned son of the town’s local hero, who died protecting them from a bandit Chakal (Dan Navarro). Both boys love Maria, daughter of General Posada (Carlos Alazraqui) who holds a rather high position of influence in the town.

La Muerte and Xibalba

One day, things delve into the supernatural during a Día de Muertos celebration as the three kids catch the attention of the goddess La Muerte (Kate del Castillo) and her estranged husband Xibalba (Ron Perlman). They, while married rule over two separate realms of the dead, The Remembered and The Forgotten, Xibalba having been banished to rule the latter after a prior dispute and bet. They bicker, both del Castillo and Perlman giving great performances, and make a bet over the children’s future; which of the two boys would marry Maria. The winner will rule The Remembered, the happier, perpetual fiesta part of the afterlife currently ruled by La Muerte. La Muerte chooses Manolo and, after a test, blesses him with a pure heart. Xibalba chooses Joaquín and gifts him a medal of invulnerability and everlasting life.

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After the free-spirited and animal welfare minded Maria releases a bunch of pigs from being slaughtered, almost killing her own father (whom Joaquín rescues) in the resulting stampede, she is sent away to Spain for finishing school. Manolo is reluctantly taught how to be a torero and Joaquín is taken under General Posada’s wing. Years later, when Maria comes back, La Muerte and Xibalba’s bet resumes in full force.

Maria Posada. Her family’s last name is most likely a nod to late 19th, early 20th Century artist José Guadalupe Posada whose satirical dress and hat wearing skeleton ‘La Calavera Catrina’ and other whimsical skeletons dressed in upper class garb have influenced Día de Muertos traditions and iconography (including La Muerte).

For a narrative mostly about a love triangle, this is certainly one of the more diplomatic takes one can get when dealing with this trope, which can be a difficult and problematic one often regarding the central love interest’s agency. It’s better written than most instances, Maria is certainly her own character despite being poised as a prize. She is a rather outspoken, which is certainly appreciated and the writers are well aware of sexist and misogynistic tropes. Maria, once she returns home, calls characters, particularly Joaquín out for his views on women and is overall unimpressed with the machismo he’s developed under her father’s wing as well as the pageantry of Manolo’s bullfighting.

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However, as good as this and the snappy humor is, the writing on The Book of Life is not inherently flawless. As a whole the piece does suffer in places, pacing issues are a thing, it feels like a lot was cut, and I wasn’t very fond of Ice Cube’s Candle Maker character much, he was a bit too Dreamworks-y compared to the more whimsical feel of everyone else, who felt very contained within the film. For me, a more ideal twist regarding the central love triangle would have Maria end up with neither of the boys, loving them both as friends, but the writers wanted a sweet star-crossed lovers type of romance and while not quite as progressive as it could have been, they delivered it rather well.

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While the movie tries to paint it as an actual competition, it’s pretty clear from the start that Manolo is the one we want Maria to end up with, and it’s pretty clear she liked him best from the start anyway. In a way it wasn’t even a love triangle in the “will she or won’t she, which one will she choose” camp but a case of a very much requited love that’s not quite realized and a third unrequited one. Joaquín as a child is more pitiable than an actual candidate. He gets a few moments that seem like a build up between him and Maria from his point of view, but it reads as decidedly one sided with purely platonic feelings and appreciation from Maria’s side of things. Her interactions with Manolo are much more weighted.

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As an adult Joaquín serves as supporting character and antagonist and, caught in the mechanizations of Xibalba, he becomes the character we don’t want Maria with either. Despite this, he’s not the actual bad guy or villain. He’s not Gaston. And that’s rather refreshing as they could have made him be much worse and not still be their friend at the end of the day. The more shades of grey use of trickster style villainy with Xibalba was also refreshing. While conniving and pretty awful, under a lesser pen he would have been much more stereotypical and most likely disposed of by the end, which they thankfully choose not to do.

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An actual screen cap! Not concept art! One of the better examples of a CGI art style in a while that looks illustrative in screenshots.

While I saw this in regular format, I’m sure The Book of Life is a treat to watch in 3D. The movie boasts beautiful animation and gorgeous color palettes all on a smaller budget compared to what Disney and Dreamworks can accomplish and fund. The story boasts a highly cartoony and meta-texual wood figurine stylization (characters losing limbs like the wooden dolls that they are, exposed wood joints, subtle sugar skull texture, paper mache and or wood grain on their skin, etc). It definitely tried its own thing and for that the film is rich and highly ornamental.

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That is a big thing for me concerning CGI, as good as say Big Hero 6 looks, I’m looking forward to people experimenting more with CGI that doesn’t actively try to aim for any particular sense of realism. I really appreciated the high level of stylization. It further enforced the folktale element to the main narrative and seems very appropriate concerning the culture being explored. The high volume of people with actual Mexican heritage working on this, most of the decorative elements, sugar skull ornamentation and costuming related to the holiday are additionally from what I can tell is handled correctly. This is something that worries me concerning Pixar’s future film centered around the same holiday that will most likely be more influential upon the public and their understanding (or misunderstanding) of Mexican traditions. Voice acting additionally was rather superb barring Ice Cube’s Candle Maker, which as I said before felt a bit tonally jarring and try-hard.

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It’s not much of a surprise that I really liked Manolo’s descent into the underworlds and the brief Eurydice katabasis narrative which, from what I can infer felt like it originally was meant to be a much larger portion if not bulk of the film? I’m a sucker for descents into the underworld to hunt for a loved one and enjoyed this Mexican take on a classic narrative element.

Don’t worry. He gets better.

If you like animated movies you should probably go support this film, particularly on November 1st and 2nd, days of the actual holiday Día de Muertos because I know Big Hero 6 is going to make a boatload of cash and is going to stomp this rather earnest little film out of theaters. Not to say that film’s not going to be good or is undeserving of the hit its going to be (from what I’ve seen it’s actually pretty good compared to Frozen) but Disney certainly doesn’t need a call for viewers.

The Book of Life is a rare example of Mexican culture being shared and showcased so affectionately for the mainstream market, additionally providing much needed diversity for Mexican and Latino children to see. Currently, as of writing this, the film has only made a little over half of its production costs so it definitely needs your money. A less than stellar marketing campaign is hurting this film and it really shouldn’t. We should support these smaller ventures; a more diverse range of perspectives and representation in the mainstream is so much better than blindly submitting to only one or two megaliths who act as our main providers for animation/children’s entertainment. The more we have the richer we’ll be.

Rating: B to B-, this well deserves your support.

Max Eber
max@sub-cultured.com
Twitter: @maxlikescomics