Welcome back to Dark Corners Streaming.
New to Netflix, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is a stop motion animated retelling of Carlo Collodi’s story
previously filmed wondrously by Disney in 1940 and a lot less wondrously by Disney earlier this year.
Co-directed by Mark Gustafson, this version earns del Toro’s name in the title,
his fingerprints are all over it from its wartime setting...
'They simply let go of their bombs to make the aircraft lighter.'
To some creatures that would be equally at home in Pan’s Labyrinth.
Subscribers will know, I love stop motion and this is brilliantly done,
there is real character in the animation,
backed up by an excellent cast headed by David Bradley’s Geppetto
and Gregory Mann’s Pinocchio
but with lots of notable cameos, including, most pleasingly, Cate Blanchett as a performing monkey.
The sets too are labours of love filled with atmosphere.
All of which is great but none of it would matter if this was not also a bold and fantastic retelling of the story.
Del Toro adds a tragic prologue so Pinocchio’s creation is an altogether darker affair than usual,
with shades of Frankenstein.
But this is wonderfully counterbalanced by Ewan MacGregor’s cricket, Sebastian
'It's a house of horrors.'
providing some slapstick comic relief that could easily be Pixar.
‘Oh please, that’s just children’s stories.’
and the film walks a very successful tightrope between humour.
‘That’s rather clever isn’t it?’
pathos,
‘Goodnight papa.’
and a gathering shadow.
Del Toro himself has connected Pinocchio to his earlier films The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth,
both tales of children and fascism,
'We'll learn to fight and fire a weapon and become a real Italian boy.'
Set in a world that exists in that hazy area where reality and fantasy meet.
By now it should be clear that del Toro has altered the story to his purpose,
some of Pinocchio’s adventures are familiar,
others very much del Toro, although it should be noted that this is still probably not as dark as the original book.
I think it’s fair to say that the emphasis of the story has shifted from the importance of telling the truth and doing as you’re told
to a very del Toran meditation on life and death and finding meaning in both.
‘He’s made of wood too. Why do they like him and not me’
It is strange and sad and funny and exciting
and I think there are very few directors working today who can draw those threads together as well as del Toro
to create something that is both moving and entertaining and which feels extremely personal to its creator but also universal in its themes.
‘You have no strings but I control you’
All that said, what I loved most about it, and what I love most about del Toro’s films generally
is its embracing of fantasy as part of the everyday world and as a legitimate medium through which to explain the everyday world.
His films feel like a continuation of a tradition of storytelling going back to cavemen trying to explain those lights in the sky at night.
That appeals to me enormously and long may he continue.
Thanks for watching. It’s pretty rare for two versions of the same story to come out in the same year and the 2 Pinocchios of 2022 are very different,
what are the most different cinematic retellings of the same story? Let us know in the comments below.