Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

dir: Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson

2022

This was surprisingly good. I say “surprisingly”, because I expect every new version of a “classic” to be “shit”.

The original book is a dark classic, the Disney flick from the 40s is a classic. There have been so many other versions made as well, most terrible. Even Steven Spielberg made a version, and called it AI, which was one of the worst of the worst.

I haven’t seen it yet, but in the same year that this came out on Netflix, Disney made another version directed by Robert Zemeckis, and starring Tom fucking Hanks as Geppetto.

I have not found a good review of that flick, cannot bring myself to watch it. I am tired of Hanks as Everyone’s Dad, fucking sick of it. After enduring him in the Elvis biopic, I said “never again”. Is there no one else who can play old man roles in America anymore? How are Wilfred Brimley, or Charles Durning, or Ossie Davis? All dead you say…

This, thankfully, was put together by del Toro, and co-directed by someone who actually knows how to direct stop motion animated movies. del Toro is probably Mexico’s most famous director (outside of Mexico, I guess), who has been wowing and irritating international audiences for decades with his visionary works. I love him in theory, but am often frustrated with the final result of his “masterpieces”.

There is no issue here. He obviously loves the original story, and beautifully incorporated it into actual Italian history of the first half of the last century in a really unique and affecting way, without downplaying the fantastical and emotional elements that made the original story so captivating.

Where the original story is all about essentially a naughty pseudo-kid learning to obey his elders and such, through having adventures that are meant to teach cautionary messages to kids, this story is more about fathers and sons, and how they disappoint each other. Oh and the rise of fascism. But mostly about how fathers and sons may both say terrible things to each other, but they don’t really mean them, and if they just love each other, everything will mostly be okay until someone dies.

Or maybe not, that sounds a bit garbled. The supreme advantage of doing things with stop motion animation, and gorgeous, meticulous stop motion animation at that, is that we in the audience hopefully get a feel for what we’re watching that’s, perversely, something more tactile, something that “feels” more real, more weighty, to our eyes and ears than the computer animated stuff.

For clarity’s sake this is not a telling of the original story; this is their own version though it has many familiar elements from some of the many versions that have been written or made (though little as possible crossover with Disney’s versions).

This version has Geppetto, the talking cricket (Ewan McGregor!), Candlewick the human friend, the evil circus / puppet guy (Christoph Waltz), but it’s also the version that has Geppetto as a drunken alcoholic carpenter mourning the death of his son Carlo.

When the movie starts Geppetto already looks 100 years old, during the First World War, with his beloved 10 year old son who is not long for this world. The world, and Jesus, are not merciful in this story, so Geppetto mourns and mourns and mourns for years, possibly decades, waiting for a pine tree to grow that he planted for his lost son.

In a drunken rage, where he is cursing the heavens themselves (thus defying God, by his creation of unholy life), Geppetto constructs a wooden golem out of wood. It is a thing both crude and exquisitely expressive, demonstrably not a boy or even vaguely human looking.

Instead of a blue fairy giving the yearning heart of an old man his deepest wish, it is actually the cricket, Sebastian, who convinces a grouping of forest spirits (that briefly and terrifyingly assemble into the form of an Old Testament seraphim (angel), of the many wings and many eyes) to animate Pinocchio. The argument pretty much comes down to “why not?”

The creature is a horror to his creator. It’s no coincidence that it all calls to mind Dr Frankenstein and his being brought to life. Geppetto is terrified of this animated puppet, who screeches and cackles and knows nothing and obeys no-one, and starts off by scuttling like an arachnid, which is enough to horrify the old man (and me).

Being set amongst Catholics, once the other townsfolk see him as well, of course they’re going to think he’s the work of the Devil. But to the Mussolini supporters, the fascists, they might dislike the wooden boy, but in him they see possibilities.

As does the puppet master Count Volpe, who sees coins in his eyes as the prospect of putting the stupid wooden thing on the stage in order to amaze the rubes. Volpe also has a monkey for a friend / slave / sub called Spazzatura who is the one who first finds Pinocchio ripe for exploitation.

Now, that contract between Volpe and the wooden boy: There’s no way that would stand up in a court of law. Pinocchio is a few days old, he’s made of wood, he’s not a person; there’s no way he can enter into a contract. I reject completely the idea that even under a fascist regime that a contract could be so enforced compelling the “boy” to tour the countryside entertaining the masses with dances and songs that celebrate the rise of the fucking fascists.

If I didn’t mention it before, which I didn’t, there are plenty of songs in this flick. The songs are okay, and it’s a relief that they’re not the ones we most readily associate (being those godawful Disney ones) with this story. It surprises me that they give the best songs to Ewan McGregor, because he’s not the guy you think of when you think of “smarmy, slinky Michael Bublé-like singer”, but it works, beautifully. He manages to make the nagging, scolding cricket into a more amusing character than the Jiminy Cricket type one.

He does say “oh the pain, the pain of it all” a lot of times. He does seem to attract a lot of violence his way.

This is a violent flick. It’s not R rated or anything, but there is a lot of violence. Pinocchio is a violent oblivious jerk initially, but once he starts to develop as a person (through developing a conscience?) more violence is visited upon him.

Here’s another area in which this version varies: Pinocchio is “killed” a number of times, which brings him to a place, that place probably being the realm of the dead. Here he meets the sister of the spirit that animated him in the first place. As that many-eyed sister brought “life”, this sister, also voiced by Tilda Swinton, is meant to bring death. And yet her sister’s interference has pretty much made Pinocchio immortal. Each time he dies he must wait a while, for the sands to run out of sandglass, but instead of running out, he begins again.

Who matters in this flick? Geppetto and Pinocchio. If we are going to ever care about this flick, we have to care about the bond between father and son, and it really comes together by the end of the flick. Pinocchio’s whole progress as a being comes down to realising that loving (and saving, when he can) his father is all that matters, regardless of what he might have said about what a terrible burden he is.

None of us asked to be born. Least of all this unholy wooden abomination. And yet, Pinocchio has to get past all of that if he’s going to save his dad and stop Mussolini.

For reals? Well, unfortunately he doesn’t assassinate Mussolini, that short-arsed dictator, but he does mock the shit out of him, which is plenty funny.

It looks amazing, truly loved the look of this flick. The animation is sublime. This masterwork was put together over the course of 1000 days. One thousand days… That’s like 3 years of painstaking work by master craftspeople and animators. And to what end? To a beautiful end.

They made strong choices with keeping Pinocchio as a strange, alien creature throughout. It makes more sense, and heightens the oddness with which this story proceeds. I also like how they emphasised and gave time to the friendship between Pinocchio and Candlewick, the son of the fascist fuck, who only listens to his dad because he wants to be loved. But that’s the thing about fascism: the people who are attracted to it are the ones who have narcissists for fathers, striving always to please them by doing increasingly terrible things, but never getting there.

I also found it somewhat disturbing (what I mean is, very disturbing), that the actor voicing Geppetto, though perfectly cast as he is, being David Bradley, is best known to me as Walder Frey from Game of Thrones.

Now, I realise that in that show there were probably characters even more loathsome that Walder Frey (like probably 30 of them, given the nature of the series). And I realise that Walder Frey is not a real person, being a character brought to life by a talented actor.

But I hate him so, so much. And not just because of the Red Wedding, oh no, his list of loathsome shitty crimes is too long to get into.

So when I first recognised that voice, fuck, did I recoil inside. It took me a good long while to let that hatred go, and to accept him as a misguided drunk dad who nevertheless comes to adore his misshapen creation.

Plus I remembered what Arya Stark does to him finally, and that made me so much happier…

This flick manages to have the emotional heft that we might assume such a story must have, but it also shocked me, after the emotionally manipulative sacrifices, last second escapes and grand gestures, that that’s not where the story ends. It doesn’t end with the “happily ever after” bit. It ends with “I love you, and I thank you for loving me, but I’m still going to lose you, and lose you, and lose you, and eventually everyone I know”. What a bittersweet, but true way to end the flick.

How like del Toro, who doesn’t hate the sentimental moment, but is more than happy to add shade and turmoil to extend a feeling out and make it more complicated, and painful, and memorable

8 times I like big animated epics and I cannot lie, you other brothers can’t deny, that when del Toro walks in with his latest thing your eyes get SPRUNG out of 10

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“You did bring me joy. Terrible, terrible joy.” – that’s kids for you - Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio