Mark Reviews Movies: PINOCCHIO (2022/II)

Pinocchio, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 8, 2022

Co-writer/co-director Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio isn't quite the story one might know from Carlo Collodi's original novel or any of the cinematic adaptations of that book. It is definitely a del Toro film, filled with some images of horror, containing a few thoughts about war and death, and, at times, serving as a takedown of authoritarian government and thinking. It doesn't entirely work or mesh together, but when del Toro and his artistic collaborators focus on the core of this tale and their existential twist on it, the film makes this story feel new again and as if it's in possession of a newfound significance.

On a more fundamental level, it's a technical marvel and a real accomplishment of design. Del Toro and co-director Mark Gustafson have made a film about a puppet that comes to life by giving the illusion of life to intricately detailed puppets. The process is stop-motion animation, an art form that has diminished in use since the advent of computer animation. The filmmaker has put together a considerable team for this project. Gustafson's previous work was during, arguably, the highpoint of popularity of the form in the 1980s and '90s, and at least some of the production was done with the help of none other than The Jim Henson Company.

Then, obviously, there's the mind and vision of del Toro, whose affection for the eerie is a near constant here—from the moment the puppet comes to life and starts causing trouble in a way that feels a bit more cosmically sinister than a kid testing the limits of his actions—and whose ability to meld the real and the fantastical feels especially strong in this medium. To be sure, none of this is technically real, since all of it—from the sets to the characters—is a matter of miniature design. That design and this process are so effective, though, that the whole film possesses a heightened sense of both the real and the fantastical.

The story doesn't need to be summarized up until a point, although del Toro and Patrick McHale's screenplay reconfigures certain things from the very start. It begins with Geppetto (voice of David Bradley), a sad and lonely woodcarver whose life was devastated during the Great War. He had a son, and a lengthy prologue shows the two laughing and playing and singing together, until a stray bomb, dropped by chance over the tiny Italian village where the two live, kills the boy.

A couple decades pass in the story, and it's impressive how much personality is infused into the details of these puppets, manipulated one frame at a time by hands that leave just the faintest hint of fingerprints on the malleable models. A tuft of Geppetto's hair bobs and bounces along with his movements, and the lines and marks on his face, framed by that tuft and an unkempt beard, show us that grief. We meet our narrator, too, a traveling author of a cricket named Sebastian J. Cricket (voice of Ewan McGregor), designed in a way that suggests a real insect with the familiar features of a del Toro creature—a look that also carries over to the Blue Fairy and Death (both voiced by Tilda Swinton).

The fairy, of course, gives life to a wooden puppet Geppetto makes, during a drunken fit of misery, and the cricket is tasked to serve as the conscience of the wooden boy Pinocchio (voice of Gregory Mann), with the creaks and knots of the unpainted wood highlighting that the character is unfinished—in more ways than one. The living puppet has a series of adventures, including a prolonged career with circus master Count Volpe (voice of Christoph Waltz) and a forced enlistment into a fascist youth camp run by the local podestà (voice of Ron Perlman).

The stuff with Volpe is more or less straight from the source material and will be familiar to anyone with knowledge of any other adaptation, but the force of creeping and, later, widespread fascism within the tale is the invention of this film (The camp, with boys playing at war with paint guns and grenades filled with confetti, seems to replace the adventure where children play and play until they become unthinking donkeys, and it's a pretty pointed substitute in that context). The political undercurrent and that specific episode might not gel narratively with the rest of the story, but tonally, it certainly fits into this version.

Here, after all, much is made of Pinocchio being essentially immortal, capable of dying, if only briefly and always returning to life after a stay in a kind of limbo, run by Death and some helping rabbits. As generally cute as the puppet's design and manner can sometimes be, there is something decidedly unnatural about his existence—an idea that del Toro, Gustafson, and McHale bring up regularly in the less-adorable side of Pinocchio's words, actions, and attitude.

Part of that, of course, is that the wooden boy has to learn assorted lessons—the ill effects of lying, the importance of obeying the right kind of authority but not mistaking the wrong kind for it, how the fleeting nature of life is what helps to give it purpose and meaning. In a broader way, though, the occasional creepiness of Pinocchio's ways and the mounting dilemma of his existence make this iteration of the character stand out from his predecessors. The whole of Pinocchio, with its ruminations about human nature and its technical prowess, stands out in its own, weird way, too.

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