Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio is a stop-motion animated musical fantasy film released on Netflix. The film is directed by Guillermo Del Toro and Mark Gustafson and is based on Gris Grimly’s design from his 2002 edition of the 1883 Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi.
The creators reimagine the classic Carlo Collodi tale of the fabled wooden boy with a whimsical tour de force that finds Pinocchio on an enchanted adventure that transcends worlds and reveals the life-giving power of love. It has a runtime of about 1 hour and 56 minutes.
The character of Pinocchio is voiced by Gregory Mann, David Bradley voices Master Geppetto, Christoph Waltz as Count Volpe, Ewan McGregor as Sebastian J. Cricket, Tilda Swinton as the Wood Sprite & death, Ron Perlman as the Podestà, Finn Wolfhard as Candlewick, Cate Blanchett as Spazzatura, Burn Gorman as the Priest, John Turturro as Il Dottore and Tim Blake Nelson as the Black Rabbits.
-Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio Review Does Not Contain Any Spoilers-
Set in Italy during the reign of Benito Mussolini, the film filters Carlo Collodi’s original Italian novel through del Toro’s typically gothic lens. This puppet is carved from the wood of a tree that grew over a young boy’s grave. When the boy’s father, Geppetto, wishes for a child to be returned to him, he gets a bit more than he bargained for with Pinocchio, a scraggly and unfinished wooden mannequin who happily injects an element of pure chaos into his new father’s life.
While the classic story shows the wooden puppet finally turning into a real boy, this rendition explores more about a parent and child relationship, which makes it all the more relatable and heartfelt. The film begins on a happy note with Geppetto living happily with his son Carlo until the war takes his sole happiness away.
He spends the next years mourning the loss of Carlo and honours his memory by planting the pine cone near his grave, even becoming an alcoholic in his grief. But one night in rage he cuts down the tree and carves out a puppet. The old woods spirits or the guardians of the world were also aware of Gepetto’s despair and decide to give him a son in the form of the pine tree puppet, in which a cricket also lived.
At first, Gepetto is flabbergasted by Pinocchio but soon thinks that he is getting his son back. That’s when the conflict started. Carlo was a very well-behaved & docile kid, on the other hand, Pinocchio is rowdy, wild and exuberant. I perceive this as an example of how a parent has some hopes for how their kid would be like, but in most cases, they are their own person with varied personalities.
Instead of trying to make them behave as you want them to, a parent should see – for who they really are and accept them. The film also portrays the effect of the war and the condition of people living in war-stricken countries. Teaching young kids to shoot weapons and taking away their childhood are some subjects that were touched upon.
Summing Up: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
The film has all the elements from dark to witty to action moments with some good dialogue that I would certainly reference. I enjoyed the character of Sebastian J. Cricket as the narrator as well as a novelist in the film and what makes it all the more spectacular is the use of stop-motion animation and every minute detail that is presented brilliantly.
Del Toro presents the idea of not conforming to boxes or strings that pull us to behave/live a certain way. In a world that wants you to be a puppet like everyone else, you should become your own person and learn about life, mortality and everything else, through your own experiences.
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is currently streaming on Netflix.
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