“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” may have premiered at the London Film Festival hot on the wooden heels of Robert Zemeckis’s live-action/CGI remake of the 1940 Disney cartoon, but no one is likely to get the two muddled up.
Partly that’s because Zemeckis’ film was a depressing waste of time, whereas del Toro’s is a soulful stop-motion masterpiece. But it’s partly because, as the title suggests, the latest version is so unmistakably a del Toro passion project.
However much he has borrowed from Disney, as well as from Carlo Collodi’s 1883 novel, his film (co-directed by Mark Gustafson) is obviously carved from the same pine tree as “The Devil’s Backbone,” “Pan’s Labyrinth”And “The Shape Of Water”: A dark and sweet horror story about death, grief, torture, and the persecution of a misunderstood beast by authoritarians.
Take a look at the first few minutes. Like Zemeckis, del Toro runs with the idea (which isn’t in the novel) that Pinocchio is a replacement for Geppetto’s dead flesh-and-blood son. The difference is that del Toro’s film includes an idyllic sequence in which the happy carpenter and his 10-year-old boy relish life in their beautifully realized Tuscan mountain village during World War I — and then little Carlo (named after the novel’s author) is blown up by a bomb while he’s in a church, gazing up at a crucifix. That definitely didn’t happen in the Disney cartoon.
The reimagining of Pinocchio’s birth is almost as radical. By this time, it’s the 1930s, and the town’s walls are plastered with Mussolini posters. Geppetto is a grieving-crazed drunk. David Bradley voices him with gruff warmth. He assembles a one-eared, crude mannequin in one dark night. Thunder crashes and lightning fill his workshop with Expressionist shadows. Tilda Swinton, a blue fairy, helps him to bring his creation to life. She has a tail and four wings and blinking eyes all over her body, except where they should be.
But Pinocchio (Gregory Mann) isn’t a bumbling lad in shorts and a bow tie. He’s a creaking, gangly scarecrow who trashes Geppetto’s cottage while the terrified old man howls, “You’re not my son!” The episode is a stunning combination of Frankenstein’s Monster and The Monkey’s Paw — and you can sort of understand why the villagers aren’t too pleased about the “abomination”Geppetto has done great things.
The standard is next to this jaw-dropping section. “Pinocchio” plot, but every element has a del Toro twist. Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor) is a pompous would-be author who keeps being splattered on the ground; Christoph Waltz at his slimiest voices a hard-up circus impresario, Count Volpe, an amalgam of the Fox and Mangiafuoco/Stromboli from other tellings of the story; Fox’s sidekick, Cat, has become a spiteful monkey voiced by Cate Blanchett. And then there are the ingredients which have no equivalents in the Disney cartoon, including several deaths and trips to the afterlife, and a fascist thug (Ron Perlman) of the kind that keeps cropping up in del Toro’s work.
It’s intense, creepy, often harrowing stuff, so you can see why del Toro has said in interviews that his “Pinocchio” isn’t a children’s film. But that doesn’t mean that brave children, and brave adults, won’t adore it. Del Toro (with Patrick McHale, his co-writers)“Adventure Time”Matthew Robbins (“Crimson Peak”), balance the more hellish misadventures with chirpy humor, Alexandre Desplat’s songs are sprightly fun, and the Ray Harryhausen–worthy models have a folksy, old-world charm and a limber grace. The natural look of stop-motion has rarely been seen, if at all,
The key reason the film is so fun, despite all the despair and trauma, is the fact that del Toro is so clear on his side with his guileless central protagonist. Once Pinocchio has stopped staggering around like a zombie, he becomes a lovably exuberant and generous hero, whose insistence on questioning the world’s conventions is both endearing and boldly satirical. He asks why the village sings hymns to a wooden Jesus while shaming a wooden puppet.
Traditionally, “Pinocchio”This is a story about a boy who refuses to obey his parents and must learn how to behave well. With its fascist backdrop this film shows how his disobedience can be a virtue that must be learned by all. This rebellious spirit makes the film a life-affirming delight, despite its seriousness.
“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”The film opens in U.S. cinemas in November and will be available worldwide on Netflix, Dec. 9.