Megan Baffoe writes for The Order of the Good Death on the themes of mortality and disobedience in director Guillermo del Toro’s recent movie:
The spirit explains her philosophy of death – that, all in all, ‘the one thing that makes human life precious and meaningful … is how brief it is.’ I’ve of course heard such sentiments before, but never framed as intriguingly as del Toro depicts it. The after-life is filled with sand-glasses and running sand, which Pinocchio falls through on his way back to Earth; there, too, the constant presence of danger means we are also constantly thinking about time. Or, to be more precise, how much time we might have left with any one person.