Director Report Card: Guillermo del Toro (2022)

12. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

Co-directed by Mark Gustafson

Now that he's the director of a Best Picture winner, it seems Guillermo del Toro is working hard to get his dream projects made. While his big budget “At the Mountains of Madness” remains unrealized, his long dreamed-about adaptation of “Pinocchio” has finally arrived. That is thanks to Netflix, who clearly wants the prestige of being in the Guillermo del Toro business. (Even if their backing of weirdo auteur projects like this have done nothing to raise their profit margins.) The often adapted tale – so often, this is the second version to debut on streaming this year alone – has been on del Toro's docket since 2008. Del Toro's version is distinguished by being stop-motion and also, obviously, by the instincts of its filmmaker. How did the monster-loving director, who made the film alongside animator Mark Gustafson, handle this material?

Geppetto is a carpenter living in a small, Italian village with his beloved son, Carlo. The boy is killed when the area is bombed during World War I. Geppetto spends the next twenty years grieving. During a drunken fit, he carves a puppet from the tree that grows on Carlo's grave. That night, a blue sprite appears from the woods and brings the puppet to life. Named Pinocchio, Geppetto is unsure what to do with him at first. The mischievous marionette rubs the agents of Mussolini's fascist government the wrong way. Soon, Pinocchio is launched on a quest that sees him acting in a traveling show, ending up in a military training camp for young boys, dying multiple times, being swallowed by a monstrous fish, and attempting to make himself into a “real” boy.

“The Adventures of Pinocchio” is one of the most published and popular children's story in history, which explains why there's been so many adaptations of it. Yet “Pinocchio” is also a tricky book to adapt because it has such an episodic plot. Del Toro's version doesn't really resolve this issue, resulting in a sluggish pace that moves in a somewhat directionless manner from encounter to encounter. Surprisingly, this “Pinocchio” more-or-less maintains the structure of the beloved Disney version than attempting to wrangle a normal story from Carlo Collodi's rambling narrative. Pinocchio is made, recruited into a puppet show instead of going to school, ends up on an island with other mischievous boys, and ends up inside a whale again with his father. The hangings and gorilla judges of Collodi's text are nowhere to be seen.

The biggest change del Toro and his team makes to the familiar tale is shifting the setting to fascist Italy during the forties. The coachman is replaced with a member of Mussolini's police force, who is determined to make fine young fascist men out of every boy in Geppeto's village. Nazi salutes are done throughout the film, alongside the propaganda poster that are put up around the town. Eventually, the puppet is sought to perform before the dictator himself. The film depicts Mussolini as a stumpy little simpleton whose childish whims are enforced with violence. If that didn't make its anti-fascist perspective clear enough, Pinocchio compares Mussolini to a giant piece-of-shit and farts in his general direction before it's over.

That is a very specific message to add to your children's movie and one that's arguably more relevant than ever. Yet “Pinocchio's” anti-fascist messaging is part of a more general anti-war statement. Carlo was killed during a senseless bombing, planes dropping their explosives simply to lighten their load. This has lead Geppetto to hating all war, in all the forms it takes. This attitude soon extends to Pinocchio too, though the state still does everything it can to indoctrinate him. The film doesn't have time to really dig into these ideas, just finding the thought that war leads to people dying for no reason being enough of a message on its own. Which maybe could've been a little more nuanced, though it's direct and easy enough for kids to understand.

Even these ideas fall towards the background as “Pinocchio” goes on. Early in the film, Pinocchio's cricket conscience – named Sebastian in this telling – describes this as a story of flawed fathers and flawed sons. Geppetto is still grieving for Carlo and creates Pinocchio as a replacement for his dead son. Yet he has trouble accepting the puppet as his boy, seeing him as a pale shadow of the idealized child he once had. Per the tradition of Collodi's text, Pinocchio is a mischievous little hell raiser who is always shirking his responsibilities and getting into trouble. This makes his journey into becoming a good son to Geppetto a long one. The conflict between father and son, and their eventual road towards realizing they love and respect each other, is the main driving force behind the story.

Del Toro's interpretation of “Pinocchio” differs from most every other take in a big way. Pinocchio's goal to become a “real” boy is ultimately not as literal as that seems. When you think about it, I suppose the message of  "change yourself so that you are worthy of love” is kind of a fucked-up thing to say to kids. Del Toro goes with the idea that Pinocchio was always worthy of his father's love. That they simply needed to work through some issues to realize that. Ultimately, we are all just trying to be the best sons and men we can be, right? It's a matter of understanding, not gaining approval. That seems to be the message the director is bringing to this well-known narrative.

Yet even this is not the sole idea inside this overstuffed “Pinocchio.” As in the original novel, this Pinocchio dies a few times. Every time he does, he ends up in a fantastical afterlife where the spectre of Death itself sends him back after a short reprieve. Since a puppet isn't really “alive,” he can't really be “dead” either. The idea of immortality is not one touched upon in adaptations of “Pinocchio” very often. This leads to a moral about making the most of the time we have on this planet and always trying our best to be good people. Yet when the film has so many other matters on its mind, there's not really space to explore this particular theme with too much depth. (Even if it does lead to a likably bittersweet final scene.) 

Guillermo del Toro's “Pinocchio” has so many ideas on its mind, that many others are left undeveloped as well. Geppetto builds Pinocchio during a thunderstorm, which brings obvious parallels to “Frankenstein” to mind. That brings ideas of playing God into the story, which invites religious themes. That is discussed openly, when wooden Pinocchio wonders why the wooden crucifix is so beloved by the townsfolk but he's so despised. You can even read this as a story about the perils of being in show business, when Pinocchio gets repeatedly screwed over by Captain Volpe, the man whose puppet show he is recruited into. Devoting a version of “Pinocchio” to any one of these ideas would probably be enough. This one just has them floating around inside, without coming to too specific a point. 

Del Toro was inspired to do his “Pinocchio” in stop-motion animation because he loved an illustrated edition drawn by Gris Grimley. Making a movie about a puppet with puppets is an irresistible idea. Mark Gustafson has been working in stop-motion to various degrees since the eighties. He's had a hand in projects like the California Raisins, “The Adventures of Mark Twain,” “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “The PJs.” With such a lengthy resume, it's unsurprising that he makes “Pinocchio” look great. The tactile quality that benefits stop-motion so much is right on display here. The animation is detailed and smooth. The character designs are likable, with the right amount of facial hair, oversized noses, or weird eyes. Yet it also looks a lot like the various films of Laika. I don't know if “The Box Trolls” was a deliberate reference point here but I was reminded of it nevertheless.

Del Toro's high-profile means there's nearly an all-star voice cast here. Newcomer Gregory Mann plays Pinocchio with all the youthful exuberance that you would expect. David Bradley brings a fittingly exhausted quality to his grieving Geppetto. Tilda Swinton's ethereal presence is perfect for this take on the Blue Fairy, which mashes up a peacock with stories of Biblically Accurate Angels. Ewan McGregor is a nicely eccentric take on the Cricket, bringing a lot of his expected charm to the role. Christoph Waltz is here as Volpe, vamping it up nicely. Even the minor roles are filled out by recognizable names. Tim Blake Nelson voices the trio of rabbits in the afterlife and, most amusingly, Cate Blanchett plays a grumbling little monkey that doesn't even speak English. And, yes, because this is a del Toro project, Ron Perlman is here. His gravelly baritone is well suited to the Podesta.  

Out of everything del Toro's “Pinocchio' sets out to do, it is unquestionably least successful as a musical. I suppose as one final homage to the Disney version, the film includes a number of songs. Not a one of the songs are especially memorable. The best proves to be the mournful ode Pinocchio sings to his father while out on the road. The rest of the songs tend to have the characters just flatly explaining what their deal is. This is clear in Pinocchio's introductory number, called “Everything is New to Me.” Or in Volpe's solo, “We Were Kings Once,” which counts among the film's least essential numbers. All the songs have annoyingly sing-songy melodies to them that never stick in the brain, with forgettable lyrics.

I couldn't help but come away from this “Pinocchio” feeling a little disappointed. I think that Italian adaptation from a few years back set my expectations for weirdness too high. It's not like del Toro's “Pinocchio” isn't weird. An anti-fascist “Pinocchio” with this many ambitious themes inside of it, rendered through lovingly created stop-motion animation, is probably as unexpected a project as you could imagine. Yet you get the impression that maybe del Toro had spent so many years dreaming about this one, he tried to shove in every idea he had. Through it all, he still wasn't able to defeat the meandering pace that effects every version of this story. While it's still a worthy effort, I came away loving it a lot less than the director's previous work. I imagine his next Netflix-backed dream project – a version of “Frankenstein,” that he's been discussing even longer – will be more up my alley. [Grade: B]