For those who are looking, Blancanieves features a brief nod to Tod Browning’s Freaks. And while you could still take your weirdo kid to director Pablo Berger’s gorgeous, silent retelling of Snow White—he say he wanted to make something his nine-year-old daughter could watch—the film’s macabre buzz is obviously a long way from The Artist. “Tod Browning is one of my favourite filmmakers,” Berger tells the Straight, in a call from Madrid. “The first time I went to a film club, one of those serious film clubs, I watched Freaks. I was 14-years-old, and it definitely hit me in ways very few other films have.”

The homage, he concedes, is conscious. The self-confessed film buff then goes on to list a number of other films and filmmakers whose influences are felt in the movie; Dreyer, Murnau, Sjöström, “Abel Gance is like God,” he says. And there’s Bunuel, of course, who is “part of our DNA.” Not to diminish Berger’s own vision for Blancanieves, a film that took 10 Goya awards this year, including best film, while making a star out of its doe-eyed lead, Macarena Garcia. The first thing that hits you is the spellbinding parade of black and white images (fired up with a rousing flamenco score.) Gradually, the film asserts its own inner logic, which seems to come from a border region somewhere between early film and Berger’s own subconscious. “There’s something abstract about it,” says Berger, of the silent era. “There’s a space for the audience to complete the film. When you get inside a silent film, you’re getting into some kind of almost hypnotic trance.”

In this sideways version of the Brothers Grimm tale, mother dies giving birth to Blancanieves (otherwise named Carmen) on the same day that father, a famed matador, is crippled in the ring. The wicked stepmother figure is his nurse, played with scenery-chewing gusto by the great Maribel Verdú (Y tu mamá también, Pan’s Labyrinth). After a botched murder attempt, the amnesiac offspring is taken in by traveling dwarves—at least one of whom is a cross-dresser—while the adult Blancanieves eventually ends up in the bullring herself. After all that, Berger broadsides us with a wild ending that could have been chanelled directly from the fabulously strange imagination of Tod Browning himself. The director laughs when I mention that my own eight-year-old has some questions about that bizarre final note.

“It really depends. Some people see it as happy, I would say it’s hopeful,” he offers. “I think movies should be seen a few times, so maybe the next time she’ll see it a different way again. But definitely, you can tell your daughter that I’ve seen the film with different audiences, and they have come to me to talk about the end, and it’s divided. Divided, sure, but it’s a great way of making sure that once the credits roll, the talking begins.

Georgia Straight, June 2013