The real deal
Unlike a few other recent retellings of the 19th-century tale of a wooden boy, this one leans into the horror, the wonder and the beauty
Years ago, I defined an issue in film criticism that I dubbed the Lara Croft effect. When the disturbingly punctuated Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life came out in 2003, I did my homework and watched Lara Croft: Tomb Raider first. Both were pretty bad, but the original was so terrible that the sequel seemed OK in comparison, and I gave it three stars out of four. I know.
All of which is to say that, despite having just watched Robert Zemeckis’s egregiously bad, deep-in-theuncanny-valley live-action Pinocchio remake, and the trailer for The True Story of Pinocchio, a new Russian animated movie in which Pauly Shore as a surprisingly adult-looking boy gives Luke Skywalker-meets-family Guy line readings — I say, despite all that, Pinocchio is a wonder and a joy.
Or to be precise, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is a wonder and a joy. This is one time when the director’s name as part of the title is a necessity. Accept no wooden imitations!
Let’s start at the beginning. Where Disney’s Pinocchio opens with 10 minutes of Jiminy Cricket introductions, and carpenter Geppetto (Tom Hanks) at his workbench mooning vaguely over a lost love, del Toro’s gives us a succinct 13-word setup: “By the time Master Geppetto made Pinocchio, he had already lost a son.” So says Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan Mcgregor), introduced as a writer rather than the hobo from the Disney story, though cynical viewers may say there is little difference.
The stop-motion animated tale then delivers a flashback of Geppetto (David Bradley) and his son Carlo, one of several nods to Carlo Collodi, who penned the original tale of Pinocchio in the 1880s. Father and son are happy and carefree until an aerial bombing during the First World War kills the boy.
More than 20 years later, with Fascists in power in Italy and another war looming, a still-distraught Geppetto angrily fells the pine tree he once planted over Carlo’s grave. During a raging lightning storm, he then drunkenly crafts a puppet out of its bole.
The whole scene has a touch of Frankenstein about it, and no wonder. Del Toro, whose love of movie monsters is no secret, recognizes the inherent creepiness and even horror of crafting a wooden golem. But rather than shy away from that aspect of the tale, he leans into it. When Geppetto espies his now animated creation, given life by a sympathetic wood sprite (Tilda Swinton), he is rightly terrified.
In addition to looking monstrous, with his gnarly haircut and knotty complexion, Pinocchio (Gregory Mann) arrives in the world free of any moral compass, which makes the presence of a Fascist official (Ron Perlman) and a ruthless impresario (Christoph Waltz) particularly frightening. Each has designs on the wooden boy, and it’s up to the cricket to act as a voice of conscience.
Why would he do such a thing? Well, he had already taken up residence in the pine tree that became Pinocchio’s body, so he feels a sense of home ownership. Also, the sprite offers him one wish in exchange for his services. This is another of the wonders in this version of Pinocchio — things that just sort of happen in other iterations take on additional weight and meaning, motivation and drama.
And beauty. Not only the animation, co-directed by Del Toro and Mark Gustafson, who has worked with Wes Anderson on Fantastic Mr. Fox, and with the California Raisins. A sublime score by Alexandre Desplat (The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Shape of Water) complements the story without overwhelming it. And there are new musical numbers — remember, this isn’t Disney’s Pinocchio — including one sung (eventually) by Mcgregor, after a few comical false starts.
I’ll leave you with the end. “What happens, happens. And then we’re gone.”
Pinocchio has been almost literally to hell and back, on a journey that invites us to ponder what it is to make choices in this life for the ones we love, and to consider that, while we may still have time to correct our mistakes, we can never actually go back and undo them. Who knew that a few sticks of pinewood and a talking orthopteran would have so much to teach us?
★★★★ 1/2