Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Early in Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Geppetto hurls Pinocchio into a firewood box. After the wood carver collects himself, he opens the door to find the puppet sitting with a glove hanging from the end of his nose. The glove is like the gloves Mickey Mouse typically wears, with three lines running down its back. This is as close the del Toro’s film ever comes to referencing the Disney classic. This is not Disney’s film. It is a much darker, weirder tale, rough with knots and splinters, but glowing with boyish mischief. It is as aesthetically-accomplished a film as Disney’s though. The stop-motion animation is astounding. I watched a puppet cry, and I believed the tears.

Geppetto’s frustration is logical. This strange wooden boy is destroying his shop with a mallet. There is a logic to everything that happens in this telling of this illogical fairy tale: “Given this world, that makes sense.” It’s all just so distressing. Any parent can sympathize with Geppetto’s irritation. Certainly there are moments when parents let that anger get the best of them. They hate it though. They wish they were made of tougher stuff and better able to control their emotions. Pinocchio needs to become a real boy, of course, and del Toro’s version of the tale knows Geppetto needs to become a real man and a better father too.

Note that Geppetto throws Pinocchio into a wood box. Twisted humor like runs throughout the film. As the world learns about this magical boy, people seek to use him as kindling in their own fires. He’s tricked into becoming a sideshow attraction, as usual. del Toro love creativity and works of art, like Geppetto’s carvings, but he hates when the arts and artists are exploited. He finds an apt metaphor in Pinocchio’s brush with fame.

Then, instead of sending the little wooden head to a pleasure fair where he can indulge his every desire, del Toro conscripts him into military service. This version of the story is set during Mussolini’s rise in Italy, and the Fascists see in the un-killable boy the template for the perfect soldier. It wouldn’t be a del Toro movie without villainous Fascists, but it is a wild detour for a Pinocchio movie, no matter the narrative logic it follows.

It also wouldn’t be a del Toro movie without some sticky Christian imagery. Here, he draws explicit parallels between the little wooden boy and the wooden crucifix hanging in the village church. Geppetto is the maker of both, and Pinocchio pretends to be the crucified Christ at one point. Add to that explicit parallel Pinocchio’s penchant for death and resurrection in this version of the tale, and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio becomes something like Guillermo del Toro’s Gospel According to Pinocchio. Del Toro has long positioned what he sees as the Christian obsession with immortality as an abomination – vampiric in Cronos, demonic in Hellboy, carnivorous in Pan’s Labyrinth, incestuous in Crimson Peak. In his Pinocchio, it is puerile. del Toro loves ghostly, ghastly things, death’s curiosities, and sees no reason to avoid them.

I sympathize with del Toro’s critique of the ways institutional Christianity leeches onto power (as the priest in this story does with the Fascists), and I agree with him that when Christianity tries to reject death, it misses its own point. Christ’s death and resurrection took away death’s sting. It turned death into a door opening to a more wondrous and magical life. We die with Christ. In some reality this is literal. In another it is metaphor. And we are raised with him. Again, both literally and metaphorically. This is one reason I love del Toro’s frequent use of doors and passageways in his stories. They bridge literal and metaphorical realities. They open into eternal realms. They remind me that we are only passing through – through the heartache and through the horrors, but always with a joy that envelops every pain and every pleasure that is part of life.

Only Guillermo del Toro could look at the Pinocchio story and see these things. Only del Toro could show them to us so skillfully. I am grateful. As always, he is helping me become a real boy.