Guillermo del Toro wanted to make an adaptation of Pinocchio for a long time, but it took him years to gather the components: a co-writer in Patrick McHale, a co-director in Mark Gustafson, a composer in Alexandre Desplat who, along with Roeban Katz, Patrick Hale, and del Toro himself also did the musical tracks, and of course producers willing to back his stop-motion vision. If you are a fan of del Toro’s work, the wait will have been worth it.
Guillermo del Toro takes the Pinocchio story and transports it to Italy under the National Fascist Party and Mussolini. As he has already shown with films like Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone, using the background of nationalism adds an extra layer of sinisterism to these stories that center children. It also provides a different motivation and backstory behind Geppetto (voiced by David Bradley) and why he makes Pinocchio (voiced by Gregory Mann). The film is fairly dark, much like many fairy tales historically were to drive home their morality tales.
Like Pan’s Labyrinth, there is a scene where a fascist father figure dies in a way that makes you want to cheer but the two films don’t share many tonal similarities, even if both the young protagonists are on journeys of discovery, and that’s because of their entry point. With a lot of Guillermo del Toro’s work, he centres characters that have already experienced great loss leading to quiet/observant protagonists. And while that fits the bill for Geppetto’s story, the main protagonist in Pinocchio is Pinocchio, and he comes from a place of innocence. This leads to a story with very different colouring than we normally get from del Toro.
Whether the film needed to be a musical or not will probably depend on your taste, but “Ciao Papa” (Desplat, Katz, del Toro) is nominated for Golden Globe, and has been shortlisted for an Academy Award. So, the songs are garnering attention. But in regard to the music, I would like to focus more on the score by Desplat. Alexandre Desplat orchestrated the score to be done with only wood instruments, no brass, giving it a very unique sound for a score. One drawn from the idea of a woodworker and a boy made from wood coming to life — in a musical way. It’s one of the best scores of the year and deserves a listen on its own.
While I will always be nostalgic for the look of hand-drawn cel animation, stop-motion has always been one of my favourite forms of animation. There is something magical about creating real figures and moving them incrementally through constructed worlds to build the story. What I like about the decision to tell Pinocchio, in particular, through stop animation is a big part of the story is people being awed/afraid of a puppet with no strings. Well, when I see stop-motion figures, I’ve always thought they have the appearance of puppets without strings. So, what could make more sense, than Pinocchio? Like with all animation, there are so many skilled artists involved, and I tip my hat to them for the many hours they logged to create this beautiful work. Of course, Guillermo del Toro, who is a notorious collector, may have also wanted to make a stop-motion film just to add more items to his vast collection.
There were two Pinocchio’s released this calendar year, and if you’re only going to watch one, make it Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (sorry Tom Hanks, I still think you’re great).
© 2020-2023. UniversalCinema Mag.