Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio

GUILLERMO DEL TORO'S PINOCCHIO   ***

Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson

2022

IDEA:  An update of the classic tale set in Fascist Italy.

BLURB:  It’s easy to understand why Guillermo del Toro has such an affinity for Pinocchio, a story of a Frankenstein’s monster who proves to be more human than many of the actual humans around him, and whose desire to be more than a literal and metaphorical puppet makes him a figure of recalcitrance. By transposing the tale to Fascist Italy, this reimagining introduces an authority that especially warrants resisting. The update also shifts the focus of the material’s inherent darkness to more urgently political modern-day evils, adding new connotations to its theme of real and symbolic father-son dyads. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio bristles with the various paternalisms and violences of patriarchs, whether they be, at the most extreme, the peremptory apparatus of fascism, or at the least, the well-meaning but short-sighted attitude of a bereft father trying to ply his wayward wooden creation into the mold of his lost son. Del Toro and his animators generate poignant and at times visceral visual expressions of the clash of barbarity and kinship, from the quasi-body horror of Pinocchio’s conception to the sandy, twilit purgatory and near-death scrapes that reflect Sebastian J. Cricket’s maxim that “love hurts.” The film is relatively sprightly considering the historical context, with musical numbers and a gently comic tone seemingly aimed at keeping the youngest viewers engaged. If del Toro and co-director Mark Gustafson don’t totally pull off the balance - the songs feel mostly like an afterthought, and the comedy is lukewarm - this Pinocchio still bewitches in its macabre, intricate handcrafted world and moves in its lucid emotional stakes.