The Book of Life

Jorge R. Gutierrez does not tell his story directly. A museum guide takes children in detention to the Book of Life and starts reading; that is why everyone in the story looks carved from wood, joints left visible. The design is not a style choice but a consequence of the object in the narrator’s hands. Gutierrez spent fourteen years getting the film made, turned away by studios that said the subject had no audience. Guillermo del Toro refused four times to hear the pitch before signing on as producer. Gutierrez then banned research trips to Mexico, on the grounds that such a trip delivers only the tourist version of a place. The score is Gustavo Santaolalla’s first for animation, familiar pop songs are rearranged for Mexican instruments, and Diego Luna sings Radiohead’s Creep as Manolo. At the 42nd Annie Awards the film won character design for Paul Sullivan, Sandra Equihua and Gutierrez; at the Golden Globes it was nominated for best animated feature and lost to How to Train Your Dragon 2. A good fit if you want the Day of the Dead used as working machinery, remembrance and forgetting mapped as two separate countries. Not for viewers who will find it arbitrary that the love triangle is settled by a wager between two rulers of the dead.