Giillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio: When the Forest Meets the Sea and the Unstable Geppetto

The mere title “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” announces that this stop-motion animated movie reflects the keen eye and visual style of the directing auteur, with a healthy dose of revisionism and reimagining baked into that. Even though it is beautiful, several of the narrative touches leave a movie that is narratively unbalanced.

The fairy is attempting to ease Geppetto’s suffering by giving the wooden boy life. The old man is initially resistant, saying, “You’re not my son!”, as the cheerful lad begins to embark on a series of harrowing adventures, including his involvement with a puppet show owned by the fearsome Stromboli.

Not surprisingly given his track record, del Toro fares better in creating a rich visual template, with the fairy and the sea monster bringing to mind the inventiveness of his landmark film “Pan’s Labyrinth” through an animated filter.

As it happens, this version of the story follows Disney+’s live-action rendition featuring Tom Hanks, which inadvertently gave the word “wooden” a workout. It is not a success and can be seen as a more interesting take, but it can be seen as someone leaving the 1942 classic alone.

More than simply inviting viewers to contemplate the nature of their own mortality, Pinocchio’s story frames the puppet as the ultimate example of the kind of innocence warmongers like the Mussolini-supporting Podestà (Ron Perlman) so often seek to corrupt and mold for their own uses. In the Podestà’s eyes, Pinocchio’s inability to die could make him the ultimate soldier capable of turning any war in Italy’s favor, which is a horrific idea in and of itself. The bigger picture of things is not different from the one depicted in the Podest’s vision for the undying puppet boy.

Because he is a new person to the world of living, and because he knows very little about how to communicate with others, his ability to walk and talk will be frightening for other people when they first meet him. The character of Sebastian, the talking cricket in his chest, is so odd that he is also too naive to know that he himself is. The man is mad about going into the outside world and being around people and things he hadn’t experienced before, and he wants nothing to do with it.