Book Review: ‘Guillermo Del Toro Cabinet of Curiosities’ is Film Lover’s Dream

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CHICAGO – Guillermo Del Toro is one of the most imaginative filmmakers alive. Even when his films don’t fully come together, there’s that spark of creativity that is truly Del Toro. He has so much going on upstairs that he needs to put it on paper, producing pages and pages of notes, drawings, etc. I’ve seen it. When I interviewed the man for “Pan’s Labyrinth,” I noticed a dusty notebook on the table next to him and asked if I could see it. He kindly let me leaf through it and it was fascinating even in those brief minutes I got to look at it. I can’t tell you how happy I am to now be able to own a version of it in the excellent “Guillermo Del Toro Cabinet of Curiosities,” one of the best film-related book releases of 2013. Even if you don’t love all of Del Toro’s films, this is a glorious thing to ask for from your loved one this holiday season.

Over more than 250 pages of wonderfully designed and organized pages, Del Toro guides the reader back through his notes & sketches, often reproducing them in their entirety and then offering insight into how they impacted the final product. Actually, he starts outside of his own imagination, including other artwork that has inspired him along with photographs of some of his physical collections. Del Toro’s love for cinema comes through in every frame of his work and this book really captures how much he knows about the art form. It’s not a business for him, it’s a passion.

Guillermo Del Toro Cabinet of Curiosities
Photo credit: Harper Design

And so, after a foreword by James Cameron, we work through Del Toro’s collections to get to the meat of the project, the writer/director’s notebooks. From concept art from “Cronos” to variations on the ghost from “The Devil’s Backbone” to detailed artwork from “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “Pacific Rim,” this is the kind of collection that fans of Del Toro’s can adore for days. Not only does it show you how an imaginative thought ends up on celluloid but it details the process through example. We see how characters can change from concept to film, even seeing ones that never made a set, much less the final product. For example, there’s a drawing of a terrifying old man with a needle that Del Toro notes he wanted to use in “Devil’s” but couldn’t find a place and he writes “that one day I’ll do” the character. One film inspires another that doesn’t even exist yet.

Speaking of not existing, film historians may be most drawn to the final chapters of the book, which include notes and sketches from films that never came to be (although, sadly, nothing from “The Hobbit,” which one knows Del Toro must have sketched before being replaced by Peter Jackson). It may be the trivia fan in me but I wish there was actually more included from projects like “Mephisto’s Bridge” and the legendary “At the Mountains of Madness.”

There are tie-in books related to the film industry released nearly every week. Sadly, most of them are throwaway, marketing maneuvers to increase the audience’s awareness of a film or merely open the wallets of its fans. “Cabinet of Curiosities” is WAY more than that. It’s a gift to movie lovers everywhere from one of its most creative voices.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com