Guillermo del Toro explains why Pinocchio is now one of his monsters

Guillermo del Toro always knew he wanted to do something Pinocchio as a stop-motion animation film. The medium fitted the story of a puppet brought to life, fulfilling his dream of making an animated feature film that was thwarted 30 years ago by a burglary and a vandal who literally blew his dreams away. His version of Pinocchio would allow him to explore what he saw as the “sacred” connection between puppet and animator through the mysterious hands-on techniques of stop motion.

But he also knew he wanted to radically alter the source material, Carlo Collodi’s 19th-century children’s book about a naughty puppet learning obedience and selflessness. In fact, he wanted to subvert it, and stop motion would help him do that. Del Toro found a poetic irony in telling Pinocchio’s story in this way, he recently told Polygon.

“It’s going to be very poignant to see a movie about a puppet in a world full of people who don’t know they’re puppets,” he says. “But she are dolls. Everyone is a puppet there. And the one who behaves less like a puppet, everyone thinks he is a puppet! I thought there was something delicious in there.”

This irony is at the heart of del Toro’s distinctive Netflix version of the story, which redefines both the setting and moral of Collodi Pinocchio. Setting the action in Mussolini’s Italy, he creates Pinocchio himself as an anarchic force who liberates the people he meets rather than learns to conform to them. It has a lot in common with the del Toro horror films shot in Europe The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinthboth depicting mid-century fascism from a child’s perspective.

Image: Netflix

“The three are about innocence and war and dictatorships, fading or active, and how they seep into everyday life, family, a town, a small church or a small life,” says del Toro. “I think one of the issues that connects Pan’s Labyrinth to Pinocchio direct is disobedience as a virtue – which is a real counter-movement to the traditional Pinocchio story that says, ‘if you obey you become a real child.’ It says, ‘if you disobey, you’ve always been real to yourself’ , you know?”

When asked why he keeps returning to that time and setting, del Toro taps into a feeling he experienced growing up: a fear and distrust of the world that were no less profound because they were contextual of his comfortable life were inexplicable. “It was not normal, the fear I had as a child, when I was in a time of peace, in a middle-class family. But I felt it,” he says emphatically.

“On the one hand you are given the world of childhood, which is permeated with fairies and wishes and magical worlds. And on the other side you interact with a world of brutality and inhumanity, and yourself see it. I mean, it’s impossible for a kid not to see it. And they all tell you things you constantly don’t see believing, or they break the rules they tell you to follow. This paradox is central to how confusing and frightening my childhood was to me.”

Image: Netflix

Del Toro’s takeover Pinocchio also deals with what it means to be a parent as a child. It spends “a disproportionate amount of time” with Geppetto, Pinocchio’s creator, who in this version renders the puppet in a drunken fit of grief and anger over the death of his son Carlo. The scene of Pinocchio’s creation is shot in an eerie, frightening way, like in a Frankenstein movie. Del Toro is known for his fascination with monsters: is his Pinocchio a monster too?

“Yeah, in a way he is. Certainly in this movie,” says del Toro. “I mean, for me, a monster is the anomaly that puts the world to the test. […] Almost like in a horror story, this man asked, ‘I want my child back.’ And the child comes back in a way it doesn’t recognize and has a slightly unholy, almost elemental energy because of the resurrection. And I think it’s very important that Geppetto prays for a miracle and when the miracle happens he’s unhappy. You know, because he does get what he wants.

“Geppetto obsessed with perfection […] learns that imperfection and things as they are is the only wisdom one can have in this world; do not seek perfection, but seek imperfection as virtue.”

Pinocchio by Guillermo del Toro now streaming on Netflix.