'Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio' Review: A Profound Portrait of Life, Death, and Patriarchy
What happens when an Academy award-winning director decides to adapt a fairy tale about a sentient puppet? Well, depending on which version of Pinocchio you saw this year, that answer may vary. This past September, Disney released a live-action reboot of its classic cartoon directed by Robert Zemeckis. And just next week Guillermo del Toro will unveil his own version of the story on Netflix. While both have obvious similarities, they also couldn’t be any more different from each other. Zemeckis’ is a mostly fun and nearly identical rehash of the 1940 film clearly meant to bring in more dollars to the House of Mouse, whereas del Toro’s is a surprisingly profound portrait of live, death, and patriarchy.
The fact that the film’s actual title is Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, should be the sole sign that this isn’t a traditional fairy tale, let alone a traditional film. Sure, there is a talking cricket and a compendium of other colorful characters, but this story is totally - and tonally - different from any of the other adaptations, especially Disney’s.
The change is felt from the very beginning when the film opens to a joyous version of Geppetto, voiced so perfectly by Harry Potter and Game of Thrones alum David Bradley. At the very beginning, he is well-known carpenter who is enjoying a seemingly fulfilled life with son. However, this boy is not Pinocchio. Instead, it’s his biological son named Carlo (a cute nod to the creator of the original tale, Carlo Collodi). Against the backdrop of a fascist 1930s Italy, they live a simple and happy life. From time to time, Geppetto takes odd jobs throughout his village. Carlo accompanies him too. One day, while attending to a crucifix at a local church, a literal bomb is dropped. Carlo dies, and from then on Geppetto becomes bitter and heartbroken. Years later, in a drunken fit of rage, Geppetto chops down a tree he and Carlo once planted, and attempts to use the wood to build a new version of his son to fill the hole in his heart. Enter the Wood Sprite, this story’s version of Disney’s Blue Fairy. She arrives and brings the soulless puppet to life. But that is truly just the beginning.
Once Geppetto meets Pinocchio, he isn’t entirely happy to have a new son. In fact, he flat out rejects him and forces him to stay home. But after sneaking out, the rest of the village discovers what he is and he becomes a malleable means for several other characters’ ends. One of those characters is Christoph Waltz’s Count Vulpe. An amalgamation of the treacherous Mangiafuoco and Fox from the original story, Vulpe is a marionette who seeks to profit off of Pinocchio’s ability to move without strings. Now, the interesting thing about Vulpe is that he isn’t entirely a bad person. Is he greedy and misguided? Yes. But it’s eventually revealed that he’s only driven by a desire to make his country proud.
Now, the desire to be a good “son” and to impress those with ultimate authority over personal agency is a glaring theme throughout the film. In addition to summing up Pinocchio’s journey to freedom, it’s a trait that another one antagonist named Podestà exhibits too. Early on, it’s revealed that Podestà is a hardcore fascist and government official. Similar to Vulpe, he wants to use Pinocchio, but not for monetary gain. Because Pinocchio isn’t a real boy and therefore can’t die he is the “the perfect soldier” to Podestà. He believes that his fatherland can’t lose with someone like Pinocchio fighting in his army. He’s trying to so hard to impress those who govern him that he loses sight of what truly matters, including his own son.
Unlike Vulpe or Podestà, Pinocchio is more pre-occupied with the joy of being a kid than the pressures of being a son. While he ultimately learns that is possible to balance both roles, he also discovers that they are each just temporary labels. It isn’t until the film’s final moments that you realize del Toro’s main message about mortality. It provides a clever spin on a story that has only ever been about what it means to be human, when the fact of the matter is there is nothing more human than living a full life and experiencing death.
Animation and rich themes aside, it feels like there is still so much to appreciate about the film. Aside from Bradley and Waltz, there are rich performances from Tilda Swinton, Cate Blanchett, and even Ewan McGregor. The latter of which plays the narrator and this iteration’s conscientious cricket. Perhaps the biggest standout is Gregory Mann, who voices Pinocchio. Through his innocence and unapologetic enthusiasm, he brings the character to life long before he eventually becomes a real boy.
To call this film Guillermo del Toro’s best film to date would be both preliminary and unfair to his others. You just can’t compare this to Pan’s Labyrinth or The Shape of Water. However, it might be more accurate to say that this is the best adaptation of Pinocchio to date and one of the best stop-motion films ever made. As labor-intensive and tedious as this particular art form has a reputation of being, there’s an air of excitement in every frame. As beautiful as the entire film looks, it isn’t until the final act - and this adaptation’s whale sequence - that you come to appreciate how much of an undertaking the film’s vision must have been. Del Toro and Mark Gustafson, whom he notably co-directs the film with, prove that the not even the sky can limit what you can do in the animation medium.
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is one of the best films of the year. If not for any of the previous reasons laid out, then for the simple fact that it is the first fairy tale to show the world that happy endings are subjective. Long after that final page turns, life goes on, but it’s what we make of it that will determine the story that ultimately gets told.