Death and fascism may not seem ideal subjects for a life-affirming fantasy animation for grownup children of all ages. Yet Mexican maestro Guillermo del Toro, whose 2017 masterpiece The Shape of Water won the Oscar for best picture, brings his monstrous cinematic skills to bear on Carlo Collodi’s timeless fable with miraculous results, turning it into a Mussolini-era parable about a “lethal form of control and paternity”. Using the tactility of stop-motion animation to lend splintery weight (both physical and emotional) to the story, Del Toro and co-director Mark Gustafson, whose credits include Fantastic Mr Fox (2009), conjure a tale of war and childhood that nods its wooden head towards Mary Shelley while thematically sitting alongside Del Toro’s Spanish-language masterpieces The Devil’s Backbone (2001) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006).
Along with co-writer Patrick McHale (Matthew Robbins gets a “screen story” credit), Del Toro resituates Collodi’s source in the between-the-war years of the 20th century. Carpenter Geppetto (voiced by David Bradley) has lost his beloved son, Carlo, in the Great War. One night, drunk on grief, he cuts down the tree by Carlo’s grave and builds a ramshackle puppet (Gris Grimly’s illustrations provide structural inspiration) to replace his lost child. When a blue spirit breathes life into the puppet, Geppetto is initially terrified of the whirling dervish unleashed in his home. But the pair soon settle down, with Pinocchio (Gregory Mann) helping Geppetto repair the huge crucified Christ that hangs like a tortured marionette in the church where congregants shriek about demonic puppets. “Everybody likes him,” says Pinocchio, pointing up at what looks like a prop from Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971). “He’s made of wood too. Why do they like him and not me?”
