Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022) – 3/5

There’s power in the wood

The film we have here is „Pinocchio“ from the year 2022 and this is not the Zemeckis/Hanks collaboration, but the film with a longer running time by Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro. He was a co-writer and co-director here. As for direction, he collaborated with Mark Gustafson, a successul stop-motion animator and Emmy winner a few decades ago and the co-writer is Patrick McHale, who has worked on more recent programs too and scored more recent awards recognition. But the big name is del Toro. He had a new film out in 2021 too, not an animated movie, so he is pretty prolific these days as his 60th birthday is getting closer. I like him, he seems like a nice fella and I also like some of his movies, so I was curious about this one here too. You do not see it really too often that defining directors go from live action to animation, which means this film here is surely a bit of an exception, but looking at the success and praise it has received, it is a step that del Toro will be happy to have taken, especially if we look at other recent takes on (very) old cartoons or animated films. There were quite a few that got remade with modern technologies in recent years, but not one of them was loved as much by the critics as this one here it seems. Maybe because the technology does not look too new. Just look at Pinocchio himself. He is all about the wood here rather than about being a human. By the way, Carlo Collodi who invented the character in the 19th century is also credited on imdb for this film. Good for him, even if he died during a time where he did not find out anymore about the success Pinocchio would have as a movie character. Barely find out about movies at all.

This film is pretty long for an animated movie as it comes extremely close to the two-hour mark and you could argue if it is too long for children’s patience, but the response is that this is not really a kids movie, at least not for very young kids. No surprise here. Del Toro has worked on other films that involved children at the center of the story, but weren’t really for children. With his name attached to the project, it should surprise nobody that you will find some really big names as voice cast members here. Gregory Mann and David Bradley (looks a bit like Willie Nelson) people are perhaps not too familiar with, but I think their voices felt extremely right for the two main characters. Especially Mann was a spot-on addition. The big Hollywood players you find then with the supporting characters. Oscar winners Blanchett, Swinton and Waltz are in here and add to that Emmy winners Turturro and McGregor plus of course the always appreciated Ron Perlman, who has worked with del Toro on so many occasions. I watched the English-language original today with German subtitles, so I got to hear these voices. Looking at these big names, I would not have recognized them, but I find it interesting that Blanchett gave her voice to Spazzatura and not one of the two mysterious magical cat characters which might have been the obvious choice. I really liked Spazzatura by the way, maybe even my favorite character from the entire movie, the little monkey. I will not compare this new film to the one from 1940, from the days of World War II, because it has been a long time since I watched that old movie and my memory there is not too good. So you see there were over 80 years between them. Completely new approach on the tale.

What I find interesting, however, is how in this new film here there is crucial elaboration on the rise of fascism and this is where/when the film is set. So it is set during the days when the old Pinocchio classic then got made. What you see in here were the days back then with constant danger of getting killed. Mussolini is also mentioned and shown here. This was mostly a mockery though, no historic impact whatsoever. Actually, you could have thought that this scene with the performance for Mussolini could be the end of the film and the spectacular highlight, bit it was not and that was alright. We all knew at that point what was going to happen and that Pinocchio surely would not let his (at that point) captor look good in the eyes of Mussolini. Also pretty telling that Pinocchio got shot once again. Or killed once again I should say. The other times when he got killed it was not through gunfire. Dangerous days for little boys apparently though with how often he suffers lethal (or fatal?) injury in here. Or add to that also the second biggest character’s son who dies relatively early on and turns Geppetto into a broken man struggling with alcoholism and more. Maybe the beginning and end of the film were actually the highlights. The scene in which Geppetto loses his son was sad and touching and same is also true with the ending in which we see Pinocchio live on, but the three characters near him die eventually. The story is told from the cricket’s perspective, so the cricket does not know what happened to Pinocchio in the end and where he went and neither do we as a consequence. But he seems alright. This was also a somewhat touching inclusion there not only because of the three tombstones, but because of the moment when Pinocchio finds the cricket lying there dead and it is something that will surely hit harder for everybody who has once or more often found their pets in the same state. Nothing nice. But good job to the filmmakers here for evoking these emotions.

As for everything in-between, it was never a remotely poor movie by any means, but also not super great I would say. The sudden switch to how they all end up in this monster from the sea came a bit out of nowhere. It was still fun to watch with how Pinocchio then could let it all out and lie about how he loves war and about many others things in order for them to reach the „exit“ and be saved. Finally, Pinocchio must make a crucial decision and sacrifice his eternity in order to save Geppetto. This was one of the most dramatic moments of the film, but not one of the most emotional for me either. The moment towards the end when the cricket uses his wish to bring Pinocchio back to life was better and more touching from my perspective. You knew what would come, even if he had to convince this magical creature first, but of course the cricket would make the altruist choice and not go for the wealth or fame he was talking about earlier. Said cricket was always inside Pinocchio. The tree that Pinocchio was made of was his home already and then later on Pinocchio turned into and stayed his home, also long after the cricket’s death as we find out in a nice little memorial inclusion towards the end too. By the way, these two fateful characters resembling cats were voiced by Tilda Swinton and I thought the one representing death reminded me a lot of a character from the relatively recent video game King’s Quest. There the character was an antagonist though. Here it is neutral and just following or even making the rules. If you thought the same about this character, feel free to check out my King’s Quest review, especially if you loved the game as much as I did.

But now let’s get back to this movie and I will just do a little brainstorming now: This is not the only 2022 film that tells us about a Mussolini car accident that may have cost a child’s life. Well, here it was not Mussolini in person who was driving the car, but basically the character who represented Il Duce and his vision of fascist Italy. It was the father of another boy, so there was in fact another father-son story in here, but that one did not end so well. It does end well with the boys though as we see a nice depiction of friendship here. That came a bit surprising how well they got along eventually, not because of what happened during their first meeting, but rather because of how they did not really spend a lot of time together to get there and become really close. So I am not sure if this was the wisest inclusion, but it was kinda cute. Pay attention to the scene early on with the boy telling Pinocchio to get closer to the fire. I think he knew exactly about the impact fire would have on wood and did this because he was not jealous when his father said a few positive words about Pinocchio, even if everything else he said about the character was negative. What else? Oh yeah, the Italian background is recurring because of the Italian flag being used here and there, because of Mussolini being a (minor) part of this film, because of the Italian-sounding names of the characters and also because of how Pinocchio keeps calling Geppetto his „papa“ on many occasions. That is all then. This film gets a positive recommendation and I am glad I saw it today. Was a bit of an exception because I think with the movie theaters where I go to it was only on today and will be tomorrow, but not the full next week. It is shown in many other movie theaters though. I read that this is the film that is considered the maybe even comfortable frontrunner this year for the animation Oscar and if it was really this good I cannot say and would rather negate, but the thumbs-up was never in doubt for me here. Animation, voice work, character design, all is convincing. The music is fine too, no surprise with Desplat in charge here and I hope that Collodi is maybe up there somewhere looking down on us and seeing how much of a factor his little puppet is still over 130 years after his death. Go see this film that is absolutely no burden at all