Without being one of the most prolific directors on the world stage, or precisely thanks to that, everything that my namesake Bayona presents ends up climbing to the top of the billboards around the world, as a regular friend and inventor of words would say, "ipsofactically."
At times heir to Tim Burton in its dark staging, but ending up being a bastard of such fantasies to break into any other theme. Because being pigeonholed is bad or because there are always interesting plots to compose. The point in the Bayona imaginary is to build tension and suspense. And that also concerns much more real aspects such as the case of the passengers of flight 571 crashed in the most remote Andes...
Yes, there is a chasm between "A Monster Comes to See Me" and "The Snow Society." But on both sides of reality and fiction there persists that feeling that everything is life on a knife's edge, between fears, uncertainties and bets always towards survival as the most intense sublimation of life. And so cinema, in the hands of Bayonne, is above all life with its icy shadows and its luminous, colorful valleys.
Top 3 recommended films by Juan Antonio Bayona
The Snow Society
AVAILABLE HERE:Everything was seen in the movie "Viven", right?
Nothing more to tell about the misfortune of the young survivors of the tragic plane crash of October 13, 1972, Friday for more signs and more fear of the superstitious. But the great dramas, the great superhuman experiences can always be retold. It will happen with the 13 children who survived for 17 days in a flooded cave, with a claustrophobic rescue like no other. Because movies like these two events can always be reshot. Because the truth, when it overtakes fiction on the right at the speed of light years, is worth telling over and over again to discover how far the limits of the human being are.
On this occasion, Bayona collects a book written very after the fact. Because the first book published with direct testimonies came out in 1974. Although it is also true that Pablo Vierci's work, which Bayona was inspired by, gains perspective without knowing if reality is somewhat distorted from the epic or the macabre. I say this because the passage of time magnifies myths in one way or another.
Be that as it may, the visual experience of the terrifying circumstances experienced by these heroes of survival are shaped in the hands of Bayona in that everything that human beings are capable of, camaraderie, desperation, madness, violence, friendship... and that remote hope that could sound like a soft violin if real life had a soundtrack when it settles into unbearable drama.
A monster comes to see me
AVAILABLE HERE:Many nights the monsters come. They can hide under your bed to cling to your ankle when you go out to pee in the middle of the night. Or they can stay in the closet, peering through the coats through that damn door you left ajar before you climbed into bed with the sheet up to your neck.
In the worst case, when the monsters arrive, you can, as a child, try to call mom or dad if you can get a voice. But that worst case scenario gets even worse sometimes, when children can't find a mom or dad to call.
In that case you have to make friends with fear, with the monster. And with luck, the monster may not want to scare but rather play. Or manage to convince the child that his anger is justified and that his abode in the shadows can be a fascinating new world to discover..., to never be afraid again.
The Orphanage
AVAILABLE HERE:The impossible was cool to me. That of the most real adventures after the tsunami was very much like a fictional documentary from the first person. But I am sure that Bayona will have a special affection, if not predilection, for her Orphanage. More than terror, tension. And more than gothic, sinister. I say this because her usual gothic horror label seems to make her related to Dracula or something. And it is a film with much more chicha, with a tension that even encompasses the existential since it connects with atavistic fears, with imaginaries coming from all the shadows of the world, physical and psychological.
Laura settles with her family in the orphanage where she grew up as a child. Her purpose is to open a residence for disabled children. The atmosphere of the old mansion awakens the imagination of her son, who begins to let himself be carried away by fantasy. The boy's games increasingly worry Laura, who begins to suspect that there is something in the house that threatens her family.