PINING FOR MORE (GUILLERMO DEL TORO'S PINOCCHIO)

© Netflix

Guillermo del Toro wasn't even 10 when he knew he wanted to make a film of 'Pinocchio'.

The Oscar winning director told Entertainment Weekly recently that Hamilton Luske and Ben Sharpsteen's 1940 Disney animated classic was one of the first feature films he went to see in Mexico as a child.

"I found it really incredible," he recalled.

"It is one of my three favourite Disneys. To this day, I worship it.

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"I think it's a perfect animated movie. But back then what struck me was that it was the first movie that captured how scary the world felt to me as a child."

Later on seeing 'Frankenstein,' del Toro said he made a connection between both stories.

"Oh, he is the same character in a way," he observed.

"He's created. He doesn't belong.

"He has to go through the world to learn the ways of men."

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Harbouring notions that he wanted to make his own 'Pinocchio' film even when he started experimenting with Super 8 cameras as a kid, del Toro carried that ambition into his twenties.

Before making 'Cronos,' he wanted to adapt Carlo Collodi's 1883 novel 'The Adventures of Pinocchio' and set his version in a totalitarian state.

In 2008, del Toro announced his passion project would be made as a stop-motion animation, based on illustrations by the American animator Gus Grimly for a 2002 version of the book.

Confirming it would be darker in tone than the Disney version, he brought Grimly and Mark Gustafson on board as well as The Jim Henson Company.

It's taken 14 years, though, to bring it to the screen.

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Stuck in development hell, most Hollywood studios turned the project down, deeming it too expensive.

Enter Netflix in 2018 who stepped in and acquired the rights, with del Toro and Gustafson co-directing and Patrick McHale joining them as a co-screenwriter.

The result is an animated feature which seems several worlds away from the 'Give A Little Whistle' optimism of Luske and Ben Sharpsteen's 1940 animation or the recent Robert Zemeckis' Disney+ live action version.

Del Toro and Gustafson's adaptation eschews the polish Disney applied to the look of Collodi's characters in both its versions.

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Ewan McGregor's narrator Sebastian J Cricket actually looks like a bug.

Gregory Mann's Pinocchio is unmistakably wooden and definitely doesn't look anything like a human 

All of the human characters in the film look weather beaten and grotesque.

Unlike Disney's versions, del Toro and McHale's script initially focuses on the tragic back story behind Pinocchio's creation.

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Time is devoted to showing David Bradley's wood carver Geppetto with his real son, Carlo who is voiced as well by Mann.

Lovingly showing the deep bond between father and son, we see Geppetto proudly taking the boy to work with him and showing him the importance of picking the right perfectly formed pine cones to grow a tree they can work from.

While working on a huge crucifix in their hometown's basilica, Carlo and Geppetto hear an ominous noise in the skies above them as storm clouds break and the rain starts to fall.

Geppetto thinks they should head home.

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However when Carlo runs back inside to retrieve a pine cone he left behind in the church, tragedy strikes.

Austrian bombers inadvertently drop a device on the church and Carlo is killed.

Overcome with grief, Geppetto plants the boy's cone by Carlo's grave where he goes everyday to weep.

Drinking heavily, he doesn't complete the crucifix.

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It is at this point that Sebastian enters the tale, spotting the pine tree that has grown by Carlo's grave and deciding it is the perfect place to set up home and write his memoirs.

However when he is about to embark on his work, an inebriated Geppetto visits Carlo's grave and in a fit of drunken rage and despair decides to chop down the pine tree and make himself a wooden boy.

Felling the tree and removing the section where Sebastian had hoped to settle, he gets to work in his workshop carving a crude wooden version of a boy while Sebastian looks on.

When Geppetto goes to bed, Tilda Swinton's blue forest sprite floats into the workshop and intervenes, deciding to alleviate the old man's pain by bringing the carved boy to life.

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Asked by Sebastian what she is doing, she offers the insect the chance to be his moral guide, enabling him to live in Pinocchio's heart and promising him one wish if he can keep the wooden boy on the right path.

Waking up the following morning to noises in the attic, Geppetto is shocked and scared when he sees his creation has come to life.

Pinocchio is a bundle of enthusiasm and from the off is eager to soak up experiences.

Locking him in a cabinet, Geppetto warns him to stay inside while he goes to Mass to figure out what he shoukd do.

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Pinocchio, however, cannot be contained and bursts out of the cabinet and makes his way to the basilica.

Entering the church, he is first spied by Finn Wolfhard's Candlewick, the son of Ron Perlman's local fascist bigwig Podesta.

Causing a commotion during Mass, Pinocchio's appearance sparks rumours of witchcraft in the town and prompts Podesta and Burn Gorman's Priest to summon Geppetto to a meeting to discuss how to handle his creation.

Podesta is keen that Pinocchio must be taught the importance of discipline and go to school.

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Geppetto consents but Pinocchio is also spotted by a monkey from a travelling puppet show, Cate Blanchett's Spazzatura who alerts his master, Christoph Waltz's Count Volpe.

When it emerges Pinocchio cannot die, he soon becomes the focus of a three way struggle between Podesta, Volpe and Geppetto.

Podesta believes Pinocchio could be the perfect soldier in Mussolini's fascist army.

Count Volpe hopes to cash in on him as a live stringless puppet in his travelling show.

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Geppetto just wants to raise him as a replacement for his son.

What path will he take?

The first thing I should stress is that unlike the Disney adaptations of Collodi's novel, this version of 'Pinocchio' feels very much out of bounds for young children.

It's pretty dark stuff, dealing with death, grief, fascism, exploitation and the horrors of war.

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A lot of the characters look grim or grotesque and it's easy to see how children under nine could be scared by the world del Toro and Gustafson have conjured.

Nevertheless, del Toro and Gustafson's version is streets ahead of the Disney when it comes to sophisticated storyelling.

Del Toro's fascination with authoritarian regimes throughout his career and the horrors associated with them features heavily.

He also looks at the unholy alliance between Italian fascists and another authoritarian institution, the Catholic Church.

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Representatives of both institutions in the town view Pinocchio as a wild, ill disciplined, disobedient spirit that needs to be contained and to conform.

They use their positions of power to bully Geppetto and bend him to their will.

Del Toro takes aim too at another institution, the entertainment industry with the character of Count Volpe and particularly those within it who financially exploit creative talent and force artists to conform to their purely commercial vision of entertainment.

While lining his own pockets and maltreating Spazzatura, Volpe insists on shoehorning into his show a nationalist anthem claiming Italy is strong under fascist rule so he can rake in the cash and ultimately perform his puppet show for Tom Kenny's Il Duce, Benito Mussolini.

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This prompts a wonderful sequence when Pinocchio and Spazzatura decide not to play ball.

There's a remarkably clever moment too when Pinocchio accompanies Geppetto to the town's basilica where the old man has been ordered to complete the crucifix following the furore over the creation of his wooden boy.

Puzzled by the contradictions he is encountering in the world, Pinocchio asks how come the townsfolk love an inanimate wood carving of Jesus but fear him as a live walking, talking being?

Del Toro, Gustafson and McHale take their audience on a macabre but ultimately rewarding trek through fascist Italy where we learn its monsters do not come in the shape of a walking, talking wooden boy but in the form of humans who manipulate and exploit him and other humans for their own gain while pretending it is for the good of the community.

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David Bradley and Gregory Mann are cast perfectly as Geppetto and Carlo/Pinocchio.

Bradley makes a virtue of his advancing years, engaging our sympathy from the off while Mann brings an innocent mischief to the part of Pinocchio, in particular.

Perlman and Waltz also serve the story well as its chief villains - the former's local fascist leader dripping with malevolence and arrogance, while the latter using a surface charm to cloak the same qualities.

McGregor turns in a spirited, if occasionally laboured performance as Sebastian - the consequence of being handed some rather hammy dialogue about the cricket's previous colourful life as well as having to convey a lot of physical gags.

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Swinton is in fine form, though, as the Wood Sprite and as the afterlife figure of Death, while Tim Blake Nelson amuses as the voices of a group of card playing, skeletal Black Rabbits who work for Death as undertakers.

John Turturro pops up as the voice of a doctor in Geppetto's hometown, while Wolfhard makes a decent fist of portraying the local fascist leader's eager to please son.

Gorman imbues his Priest with the traits of a Creeping Jesus, while Tom Kenny has fun as the voices of Mussolini and a sea captain with a peg leg who warns Geppetto about a giant dogfish.

Blanchett is reduced to making monkey noises.

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Del Toro teams up again with composer Alexandre Desplat, with whom he worked on the Best Picture Oscar winning 'The Shape of Water,' on a soundtrack that features several musical set-pieces.

And while the songs are maybe not as touching or amusing as the 1940 Disney feature, they are energetically performed by the cast.

As for the stop motion animation, it works and it brings a greater sense of magical realism to Collodi's tale.

Del Toro and Gustafson's version may not be easy on the eye but it is certainly richer than the recent Zemeckis' adaptation.

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And its rough look serves to only underline just how grotesque life was in Mussolini's Italy 

By injecting political commentary, del Toro's reimagining of Collodi's fantasy definitely feels a lot less stale than the Zemeckis version.

The Mexican director understands just how macabre the concept is and isn't afraid to push those boundaries further.

His Pinocchio will have you mulling over its themes for much, much longer than Disney+'s much lighter and inferior fare.

('Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio' received its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on October 15, 2022 and was made available for streaming on Netflix on December 9, 2022)