Guillermo del Toro is one of the more sincere and caring filmmakers on the planet. Even without any personal knowledge of the man, as a writer-director, you can see the love and hope that he puts into every project he works on. So, it’s no surprise that as we enter 2019, and hope that this year is somehow better than the last (which was a dumpster fire, to put it mildly), del Toro is here to give us some words of optimism.
As part of Time magazine’s “The Art of Optimism” issue, edited by Ava DuVernay, no less, del Toro writes a beautiful essay explaining why its time to be optimistic, even in a world that begs you to be cynical.
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“Optimism is radical. It is the hard choice, the brave choice,” del Toro writes. “And it is, it seems to me, most needed now, in the face of despair—just as a car is most useful when you have a distance to close. Otherwise, it is a large, unmovable object parked in the garage.”
He continues, “History and fable have both proven that nothing is ever entirely lost. David can take Goliath. A beach in Normandy can turn the tide of war. Bravery can topple the powerful. These facts are often seen as exceptional, but they are not. Every day, we all become the balance of our choices—choices between love and fear, belief or despair. No hope is ever too small.”
The filmmaker compares optimism to our instinct to inhale while suffocating. It’s the choice we can make in light of everything telling us that the world is going to hell.
“And so it goes time after time, choice after choice, that we decide to leave behind a biography or an epitaph. Look around you now and decide between the two,” concludes the filmmaker. “Inhale or die.”