Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)
Movie rating: 8/10
“The one thing that makes life precious, you see, is how brief it is.”
Wow. I didn’t expect a Pinocchio movie to offer up such hard-hitting existential meditations. But Guillermo del Toro’s adaptation of the classic tale about a wooden puppet who comes to life specializes in exceeding our expectations.
My main recollection of Pinocchio, like many people, comes from the 1940 Disney animated film. Having not seen it since childhood, my memories of the story were hazy. What I remember are the main elements everyone associates with Pinocchio: a marionette who wants to be a real boy and whose nose grows when he lies. I also vaguely recall Pinocchio going to a place called Pleasure Island with boys who just want to play games, where they end up turning into donkeys and being put to work. Also something about a giant fish.
The original source of this oft-told story is the 1883 novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Italian author Carlo Collodi, cited as one of the best-selling books ever published. One of the best aspects of del Toro’s stop-motion animated musical is how he expands upon the story’s Italian origins and its themes by tying them to a recurring concern in his films: resistance to fascist rule. Similar to how his Pan’s Labyrinth set its fantasy themes against the backdrop of Francoist Spain, del Toro’s version of Pinocchio shifts the story’s setting to Fascist Italy.
Collodi’s novel was written in the wake of Italy’s unification as a modern nation-state, and focused on the importance of responsibility and obedience: Pinocchio should be good, study, and work hard. These themes are a perfect lens through which to interrogate fascist ideology, which is centred on nationalism, authoritarianism, militarism, hierarchy, class collaboration, “traditional values”, and aggressive expansion. Every citizen in the fascist state has a responsibility to serve the nation, which is embodied in the leader. The way to serve the nation is therefore unconditional obedience to the leader. In another fascist state, Nazi Germany, this concept was known as the Führerprinzip, or “leadership principle”. The decision to set Pinocchio in Fascist Italy is frankly brilliant.
Del Toro’s innovations don’t stop at political commentary. Pinnochio’s most affecting moments involve its most universal themes: the bond between parent and child, the sorrow of losing a loved one, the inevitability of death and how this gives meaning to life. In the film’s prologue, set during the First World War, kindly carpenter Geppetto (voiced by David Bradley) loses his son Carlo (voiced by Gregory Mann, who also plays Pinocchio) when the boy is killed during a bombing raid. Geppetto is devastated. As our narrator Sebastian J. Cricket (voiced by Ewan McGregor) observes, “The years passed. The world moved on. But Geppetto did not.” Anyone who has experienced the death of someone close to them, particularly an immediate family member, can relate. A parent having to bury their child is a uniquely tragic experience. If there’s one thing I’ve learned this year from talking about grief, it’s that the pain of a loved one dying never leaves you. You just learn to live with it. The aftermath of Carlo’s death is likely to provoke tears in many an audience member, not for the last time in this film.
In his grief, Geppetto drinks heavily and one night builds a wooden puppet in the image of his beloved Carlo. After he passes out, the Wood Sprite (voiced by Tilda Swinton) brings Pinocchio to life. She meets Sebastian and promises to grant the cricket a wish if he looks after Pinocchio and guides him on the right moral path. The character of Sebastian is yet another instance where del Toro improves on previous adaptations. The affable anthropomorphic cricket is a highlight of the film and steals every scene he’s in. I never cared much about Jiminy Cricket, but Sebastian is charming to a fault, an “author and raconteur” who sets up home in a tree, complete with Schopenhauer portrait on the wall, to write his memoirs. It is this same tree that Geppetto chops down and uses the wood from to make Pinocchio.
When Pinocchio is brought to life, his wide-eyed enthusiasm at the world around him is infectious, expressed through one of the most delightful of the film’s songs, “Everything is New to Me”. Understandably, the first reaction of many people—even Geppetto—to the sight of this walking, talking marionette is one of fear. The local Roman Catholic priest and his congregation believe Pinocchio to be the work of the devil. Soon, unsavoury characters begin to scheme how they can exploit Pinocchio for their own ends. Count Volpe (voiced by Christoph Waltz), a former aristocrat turned puppet master, seeks to turn Pinocchio into the chief attraction at his circus. When it becomes apparent that Pinocchio cannot die, the Podestà (voiced by Ron Perlman), a local Fascist government official, sees in him the ultimate soldier who can be conscripted into Mussolini’s army to fight in the Second World War.
This is the flip side of the obedience and “responsibility” Collodi presented as the chief virtues Pinocchio needs to cultivate. In certain cases virtues can turn into their opposites: obedience and “responsibility” to a regime such as Mussolini’s makes one a party to the regime’s crimes. “One has not not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws,” Martin Luther King, Jr. said. “Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” When Count Volpe says Pinocchio signed a legal contract to perform in his circus, and the Podestà says Pinocchio must be conscripted into the Italian army to fight for the Fascist cause, Geppetto simply says one must obey the law. He has no response when Pinocchio asks him why one must obey these laws. In an interview with Vanity Fair, del Toro explained how the setting in Fascist Italy helped him invert some of the original tale:
Del Toro’s Pinocchio takes place not in a fairy-tale world, but in Italy between World War I and World War II, during the rise of fascism and authoritarian rule in the country. The wooden boy happens to come to life “in an environment in which citizens behave with obedient, almost puppet-like faithfulness,” del Toro says.
In Disney’s tale, as with most versions of the story, Pinocchio’s fortunes take a downward turn when he succumbs to his desires and vices and indulges in misbehavior. Del Toro wanted to shift perspective on that as well. “It’s counter to the book, because the book is seeking the domestication of the child’s spirit in a strange way,” the director says. “It’s a book full of great invention, but it’s also in favor of obeying your parents and being ‘a good boy’ and all that. This [movie] is about finding yourself, and finding your way in the world—not just obeying the commandments that are given to you, but figuring out when they are okay or not.”
“Many times the fable has seemed, to me, in favor of obedience and domestication of the soul,” del Toro adds. “Blind obedience is not a virtue. The virtue Pinocchio has is to disobey. At a time when everybody else behaves as a puppet—he doesn’t. Those are the interesting things, for me. I don’t want to retell the same story. I want to tell it my way and in the way I understand the world.”
Aside from counselling obedience, a key story element of Pinocchio is the titular character’s ambition to be a real boy. Here del Toro again pushes things further. When Pinocchio dies he comes back to life, though it takes longer for him to return each time. The source of this information is Death (also voiced by Swinton), the Wood Sprite’s sister. While Geppetto created Pinocchio as a proxy for his late son Carlo, we are reminded in various ways that Pinocchio is not a real boy. As Death tells Pinocchio, real boys do not come back after they die. The reason we value life so highly is because of how short it is. Endless life, Death points out, also means endless suffering as those we love die. The need to save Geppetto’s life eventually makes Pinocchio ponder how much he values immortality.
The strongest parts of del Toro’s film are the first act, the later section when Pinocchio is conscripted into the Italian army, and the ending. The movie drags a bit in the middle, but overall this is a dazzling and inventive take on an old story that invests it with new relevance. This review has just skimmed the surface of its themes. There are plenty of interesting aspects I didn’t even touch on here, such as how the Podestà’s relationship with his own son both parallels and different from the relationship between Geppetto and Pinocchio, or Geppetto and Carlo. I’d also love to hear someone more well-versed in the works of Arthur Schopenhauer explain the reference to him here, and how his philosophy might relate to the film
Pinocchio seems to be a hot property these days, with many recent film adaptations including Disney’s live-action remake of its 1940 cartoon. No version, however, has displayed the ambition and power of del Toro’s. This is the best Pinocchio to date.
Thanks for the nuanced review, Matt. Definitely going to give this one a watch.