{"id":15897,"date":"2022-12-09T10:54:29","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T10:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/?p=15897"},"modified":"2022-12-11T00:20:14","modified_gmt":"2022-12-11T00:20:14","slug":"guillermo-del-toros-pinocchio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/guillermo-del-toros-pinocchio\/","title":{"rendered":"Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio"},"content":{"rendered":"
[vc_section][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Guillermo del Toro puts his personal stamp with exquisite cinematography capturing intricate stop-action in his dark, musical reimagining of the classic tale. He combines Carlo Collodi\u2019s 1880 novel, \u201cThe Adventures of Pinocchio,\u201d with a touch of Mary Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein to tell the story of a puppet thrown cluelessly into the real world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Academy Award winning director brings the famous piece of wood to life this time in rich, vibrant deep hues and his own wondrous, perspective of the tale. It\u2019s kept family friendly, but del Toro updates the story to be more complicated for today\u2019s sophisticated young audience. Although PG, it may be a little too dark for the youngest viewers.<\/p>\n

It took 10 years to bring Pinocchio up to del Toro\u2019s liking. Here the director reverts back to his unique style of filmmaking from his previous works including Pan\u2019s Labyrinth<\/i> and The Shape of Water, <\/i>co-directing with Mark Gustafson. This is a much more imaginative and better produced Pinocchio than Disney\u2019s recent streaming live-action attempt to resurrect their 1940 animated tale with Tom Hanks as Geppetto. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With an ambitious script, written by del Toro and Patrick McHale, they take aspects of the original tale by Collodi, adding tangential issues and even historical figures and events. He incorporates fascism and Italian dictator, Mussolini, chief among them along with family, love and death. There are even equal parts of whimsy, tragedy, comedy, action, love and compassion throughout.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Cinematographer, Frank Passingham clearly captures the detail of the puppets and the sets. Academy Award winning composer, Alexandre Desplat (The Shape of Water and so many films<\/i>) composed the film\u2019s score as well as original songs for the film.[\/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”15911″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”15904″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”15905″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]The animated characters that come to life on camera\u00a0 <\/span>began as hand-carved puppets. They were painstakingly moved and shot 24 times to produce each second on film. Del Toro had 60 soundstages shooting characters on different sets simultaneously at a studio in Portland, Oregon, sometimes only creating a few seconds on film each day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Pinocchio (voiced by Gregory Mann) still yearns to be a real boy and has an intelligent moral advisor in the talking insect, Sebastian J. Cricket, who becomes the narrator of the film, as well as Pinocchio\u2019s conscience. Ewan McGregor is the voice of reason as the new Jiminy Cricket character, charged with looking after the puppet when he suddenly comes to life. This cricket is an author and writer who isn\u2019t keen on taking on this important responsibility. McGregor does well injecting his multi-handed, buggy character with wit, humor, singing some musical numbers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the outset, during WWI, beloved wood carver Geppetto (voiced by David Bradley) in a little Italian village is about to complete his masterpiece of a huge crucifix for the church. With the help of his cherished son, Carlo (nice nod to the original author, Carlo Collodi) they\u2019re ready to head home when a bomb is thoughtlessly dropped. It rips into the church, killing Gepetto\u2019s beloved son. The father is unconsolable, mourning for years on end.<\/p>\n

One night, in a drunken rage, he chops down the pine tree he planted at Carlo\u2019s grave, not knowing there\u2019s a cricket (McGregor) living inside. He fashions the puppet from that tree and, lo and behold, Pinocchio emerges as the walking, talking\u00a0 <\/span>boy magically brought to life by a magical Wood Sprite (Tilda Swinton). Her smoky voice is intimidating as she floats around the room giving him life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Easily swayed by whoever he meets, Pinocchio seems to be the opposite of the mild, intelligent, obedient, loving Carlo. Pinocchio is challenging, contentious and impetuous. Geppetto gets annoyed and angered by the wooden boy\u2019s penchant for getting into trouble and the townspeople are not eager to embrace him either.<\/p>\n

But there are opportunists just waiting for the chance to use the little puppet.\u00a0 <\/span>Podesta (Ron Perlman) is a government officer who wants to turn him into a fascist soldier, but not before circus ringmaster Volpe (Christoph Waltz) sees a fortune in having the living puppet as his headliner. Pinocchio\u2019s songs and dances highlight del Toro’s animation artistry.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Volpe\u2019s annoying evil sidekick, Spazzatura, has surprise casting. Cate Blanchette asked del Toro if she could play the pesky monkey after working with the director on Nightmare Alley.<\/i> She actually studied shrieks and voices of chimps to come up with her own characterization. \u00a0<\/span>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”15913″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”15906″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1\/3″][vc_single_image image=”15914″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column_inner][\/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]Del Toro takes a clear political stand at the same time he\u2019s entertaining us. Pinocchio performs a song and dance in a command performance for \u201cIl Duce\u201d Benito Mussolini. The wooden boy literally throws it in the dictator\u2019s face, dancing with a piece of wooden poop to make fun of the despot. Strange how art imitates life. Del Toro places his story in 1930\u2019s fascist Italy with a powerful, populist leader in Mussolini. How often are we seeing the word fascist in today\u2019s national and international headlines?<\/p>\n

The major lesson of Carlo Collodi\u2019s original novel remains. Pinocchio\u2019s nose grows with each lie he tells. The nose doesn\u2019t just grow longer, del Toro does it in his own way, with sprouting branches and leaves as the boy\u2019s proboscis transforms with each falsehood.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Del Toro\u2019s dark, bizarre visions are in evidence. As a piece of wood imbued with life, Pinocchio cannot die. That leads to another interesting plot line where Pinocchio repeatedly visits the afterlife where a group of Black Rabbits (voiced with gusto by Tim Blake Nelson) and the Wood Sprite\u2019s twin sister, Death (also Swinton) hold court.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Del Toro\u2019s mother gave him Pinocchio dolls growing up and this film was what he wanted to do for her as well as for himself. Unfortunately, she died a month before the film\u2019s release, but del Toro still felt her with him at the premiere.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are some very dark moments, especially in the sequence with the enormous, maniacally lethal fish, so it is not quite as family friendly, as other versions. But the stop-action animation of these hand-crafted puppets on sets with such detail produce extraordinary storytelling. It took a decade to put this piece of \u00a0filmmaking artistry together, and who better to come up with such difficult challenges to make his dream come true, than Guillermo del Toro.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Netflix. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>1 hour 57 minutes.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span>PG\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Streaming on Netflix<\/i><\/b>[\/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Od2NW1sfRdA” el_width=”80″ align=”center” css_animation=”fadeInUp”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][\/vc_section]\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_section][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Guillermo del Toro puts his personal stamp with exquisite cinematography capturing intricate stop-action in his dark, musical reimagining of the classic tale. He combines Carlo Collodi\u2019s 1880 novel, \u201cThe Adventures of Pinocchio,\u201d with a touch of Mary Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein to tell the story of a puppet thrown cluelessly into the real world.\u00a0 The Academy Award […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15901,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15897"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15923,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15897\/revisions\/15923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moviesandshakers.com\/staging\/4428\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}