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Rating: "Better a pig than a fascist"
The iconic cult quote from Porco Rosso, one of the most famous films by master Miyazaki, could perfectly align with this new and highly personal version of Pinocchio by our Guillermone.
Apparently, no one is denied their own version of Pinocchio, given the proliferation of versions even very close to each other. Moreover, Carlo Collodi's original creation is one of the most famous and beloved in the world, among those that emerged from Italian literature. A timeless and universal story, capable of speaking to anyone and in all cultures.
The Disney classic has delivered the figure of the stringless puppet and the various other characters of the Collodian tale to the global collective imagination, albeit in a clearly sugar-coated manner.
But Pinocchio is an icon that transcends direct adaptations and is cited in the most varied contexts. Unforgettable is the scene from Terry Gilliam's masterpiece, The Fisher King, where a lost Jeff Bridges finds a Pinocchio model on the ground, referring to it as "my little Italian friend."
Three years ago came Garrone's version, which I personally already appreciated immensely, finding it satisfying and almost "definitive," a very dark version with great visual impact.
I won't comment yet on Zemeckis's, which I have to catch up on. But now it's time to talk about Guillermo del Toro's new film. The first animated work by the Mexican director and the first stop-motion version of Pinocchio. A full two-hour stop-motion film, which, if not a record for a work made with such a complex and expensive technique, comes close.
Del Toro's Pinocchio is a bewildering film for those expecting yet another version of a story, indeed, so famous and rooted in popular culture. Instead, del Toro wisely chooses to stage a film perfectly consistent with his entire authorial history, with his themes also, and above all, political. Themes that have characterized his entire career.
Del Toro thus embarks on a personal journey, where Pinocchio becomes the pretext for a new, radical critique of fascism, war, and the horrors produced by man. Thus joining the aforementioned Miyazaki and continuing in the vein already traced by Pan's Labyrinth, not forgetting the esoteric and revived Nazism of Hellboy. The latter also shares with Pinocchio the portrayal of a protective and tender paternal figure, in that case played by the great John Hurt.
And precisely regarding fascism, this Pinocchio, available on Netflix since yesterday, conveys well the sense of the tragic farce that was the twenty-year period, although obviously simplifying to the maximum as is inevitable, but after all what counts within the film emerges with force just as in the other aforementioned works in which del Toro has expressed his aversion to fascist culture in all its forms and derivations.
Del Toro also makes his personal homage to Italy, through a sort of road movie, at the moment when Pinocchio tours the itinerant shows of Count Volpe (that is, Mangiafuoco, voiced by Christoph Waltz, a born villain). From Alessandria to Catania, touching cities and small towns like the starting one.
After Luca and Porco Rosso, another animated film that somehow pays homage to our country, its humanity and culture, and its complexities and contradictions.
This Pinocchio maintains the fundamental structure of the story we all know in the basic events but eliminates characters like the Cat and the Fox, modifies some, adds others created from scratch, takes totally different directions from the original fairy tale at many moments, shifts the temporal context to the Mussolini era (with the beginning during the First World War), also adding a poignant backstory about Geppetto and his personal history, thus honoring Collodi, in the figure of the lost son Carlo. And, with Miyazaki, also shares, besides anti-fascism, the vision of a naturalistic and eternal spirituality, reminiscent of the spirits in Princess Mononoke's Forest.
And brings all this to completion in a marvelous and, once again, personal and courageous ending, deciding not to transform Pinocchio into a child. But rather, choosing to have the little hero accept his nature as a wooden puppet until the end, albeit finally mortal. And here lies all of del Toro's poetics on freaks and self-acceptance.
Visually extraordinary (but del Toro never disappoints in this regard), with great passion and imagination in some ideas, such as Pinocchio's nose, which when it lengthens for lies becomes a long sprouting branch. Sweet in the musical moments, with all beautiful and touching songs.
Perhaps it doesn't add much - or anyway relatively little - to del Toro's filmography, but it adds a lot to the history of Pinocchio adaptations in cinema and, ultimately and most of all, remains a great reflection on transience, on the value of time and affections. Which may not be original... but it is never banal either.
A film by del Toro is always an experience worth living.
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