After Disney's dismal remake earlier this year, there may be little collective appetite for another Pinocchio movie, but del Toro's version, set in fascist Italy, is eccentric and imaginative enough to make us hungry all over again. .
The possessive claim in the title "Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio" is brave. There is confidence in filming an oft-told story, at least as old as the hills, and suddenly branding it your own: even two authors as daring as Francis Ford Coppola and Baz Luhrmann didn't slap theirs in the face. . names in "Bram Stoker's Dracula" and "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet", respectively. Still, del Toro's stop-motion twist on Carlo Collodi's 19th-century chestnut "The Adventures of Pinocchio" can hardly be blamed for wanting to herald his distinctive vision over the top: after countless retellings of the boy's tale of wood, and coming hot on his heels. from Robert Zemeckis' miserable Disney remake, Netflix's rival adaptation has to bill itself as something different. What is; he is also often charming.
Directors: Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson
Writers: Guillermo del Toro, Patrick McHale, Matthew Robbins
Stars: Gregory Mann, Ewan McGregor, Ron Perlman
There's a reason Collodi's story keeps getting recycled, of course: It's cool and unusual, a Tuscan cautionary folktale that transcends the tradition of its form with a delirious surrealism and a wicked streak of wit. So delusional and so wicked, in fact, that it's rarely been adapted very faithfully, with Disney's mellower interpretation of 1940, most notable for giving the brash, self-serving character of the original tale's title a much nicer makeover, becoming canonical in the imagination of many children.
Directing alongside stop-motion veteran Mark Gustafson, Del Toro isn't much more interested in strict fidelity than Walt Disney is. His "Pinocchio" updates the setting of Mussolini's wartime Italy, and remixes a number of Collodi's antics with some bold ideas of his own, especially a fresh and more forward-thinking idea of what the main thrust of the story might entail. of the transformation of the "real boy". . In spirit, however, this remarkably quirky and terrifying animation feels more in line with Collodi's imagination than most previous iterations. As you'd expect from the man behind "Pan's Labyrinth" and "The Devil's Backbone," there's a dark and violent sense of consequence to this one, a healthy sense of the grotesque, that makes for a happy ending, yes, that's still on the cards. , but not quite as you might expect: feel hard-earned.
The strangest and prickliest glimpse of the film begins with the image of Pinocchio himself, here a far cry from the cutely dressed, bubble-faced boy of Disney. Taking a cue from American artist Gris Grimly's illustrations for a 2002 edition of Collodi's book, del Toro and Gustafson redesigned him as a literal stick figure, gnarled and lanky and held up with tangled fingernails, with a nose that grows not like a neat rod but on branches covered with antler-like leaves. If it looks rustic and unfinished, that's because it is: created by his human woodcarver "father" Geppetto in a drunken fit of grief for his late, angelic son Carlo.
Sketched at the beginning of the film, this tearful new backstory also allows del Toro an early introduction to two of the film's other fixations: morbid Christian symbolism and the horrors of war. "Everyone likes it, why not me?" asks naively mischievous Pinocchio, pointing to the gigantic wooden crucifix Geppetto is repairing for the village church, one damaged in the same World War I bombing raid that killed Carlo. Two decades later, in an Italy under the fascist yoke of Il Duce, the community rejects the woodcutter as a demonic outsider; However, the town's overbearing Podestà believes the "maverick" stooge could prove himself in the army, serving alongside his terrified son Candlewick.
The conservatively macho conceptual leap from "real boy" to "real man" is one of the cleverest layers in del Toro and "Adventure Time" screenwriter Patrick McHale's busy script, though there's hardly any time to ponder nuance and subtexts like the story, it's true. to the episodic source of it, rushes. The Podestà is not the only one after Pinocchio, after all, as the traveling circus master, Count Volpe, sees a large number of lyres on the strange living puppet. Meanwhile, our hero's repeated scratches continue to lead him to a purgatory underworld, where a sneaky electric blue incarnation of Death, sister to his life-giving guardian spirit, determines his fate once upon a time.
Watch Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio 2022 Movie Trailer
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