More than 10 years prior to Guillermo del Toro’s latest Oscar-nominated film, Nightmare Alley, and even before his Best Picture win for The Shape of Water, the highly acclaimed Mexican filmmaker announced that one of his biggest passion projects would someday be his own take on the classic tale of Pinocchio. In 2008, del Toro spoke about his personal connection with the character and the story, and that at some point in the future, he would partner with the Jim Henson Company to bring his vision to life.
That time has finally come, as the much-anticipated project came to fruition with the help of co-director Mark Gustafson (Return to Oz, Fantastic Mr. Fox) and Netflix. Del Toro, along with Patrick McGale (Over the Garden Wall, Adventure Time), put together a brilliant screenplay, loosely based on the novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Italian novelist Carlo Collodi, and created the best animated film of 2022, and it’s really not even close.
Those going into del Toro’s Pinocchio and expecting the classic Disney tale may be disappointed, as this film takes place in a war-torn, Fascist Italy during World War II. A local woodworker, Geppetto, loses his son Carlo during a bombing while creating and displaying a crucifix at the town church. In a drunken haze, Geppetto chops down a tree, which happens to be the home of Sebastian J. Cricket, and carves a wooden boy out of the grief of losing his son.
The creation is brought to life by a Wood Sprite, and when Geppetto awakens, the two start to bond. As the townspeople find out the true nature of the wooden boy, Pinocchio must leave Geppetto before he can be drafted into war, and used as an unkillable weapon.
As I said, it’s a far cry from the feel-good, father-and-son tale from Walt Disney, but it still captures the important themes of the original story. Like many of Guillermo del Toro’s works, the war-ravaged setting offers a layer of dread outside the central storytelling.
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Fans of Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone will feel right at home here. That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of feel-good moments in the film. The cheerful segments are peppered in flawlessly, consistently reminding us that where there is bad, there can also be good. Pinocchio simply toes the line perfectly between grim realism and fantastical adventure.
Starting with the most obvious and most brilliant aspect of Pinocchio; the animation. This is quite possibly the cleanest, most impressive, and most difficult stop-motion film ever made. The animation was brought together by a team of more than 100 people, all involved in the best of the best in stop-motion and visual effects in Hollywood.
Before Pinocchio, films like Kubo and the Two Strings, Isle of Dogs, and Coraline consistently battled over being the best. In all honesty, even with as amazing and impressive as the animation in those films is, they don’t hold a candle to the work in Pinocchio.
The voice cast is absolutely stacked in this film. Not only are there del Toro regulars like Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Cronos), Cate Blanchett (Nightmare Alley), and David Bradley (Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia), but a smattering of amazing first-time collaborators, like Tilda Swinton, John Turturro, and Ewan McGregor as Sebastian J. Cricket. Christoph Waltz gives a flesh-curdling performance as the dastardly Count Volpe, one of the main antagonists of the film. Gregory Mann, in one of his first film credits, shines as Pinocchio himself.
The gorgeous animation and engaging story are paced with another phenomenal score from Alexandre Desplat, the seven-time Academy Award-nominated French composer, who’s taken home two Best Score Oscars; one for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, and one for del Toro’s Best Picture win, The Shape of Water. His score here isn’t any less flowing and perfectly matched. I can’t imagine we won’t be nominated for this one as well.
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Strangely, there are several catchy musical numbers in Pinocchio that, on the surface level, would be fun for kids. Some of the themes may feel a little too serious for the younger crowd, but maybe that’s the point; to show the importance of things like the world’s dark history or inevitable occurrences like death and grief, but display it in a way that can be more understandable or palatable for children.
In a way, it reminds me of Art Spiegelman’s Maus, the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel that explores a Holocaust story using mice, cats, and pigs as the medium. Parents can make their own decisions here about what’s best for their kids. Regardless, the story that Pinocchio tells is necessary.
There are very few animated films out there that I consider perfect or almost perfect films, and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is on the list. We’re very fortunate to have gotten Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Pinocchio in such a short time span, and although drastically different, both will go down in history as two of the most well-made films of all time.
It’s important that we appreciate not only the sheer amount of effort that goes into animation like this, but the genius in the storytelling, because we could go decades without getting films as creative as these. Just like the words that Sebastian J. Cricket leaves us within the final moments of Pinocchio, “What happens, happens. And then we are gone.”
