Pining Away

The best Pinocchio (2022) of 2022 is clearly the stop-motion one by Guillermo del Toro - we'll never know if the Tom Hanks one is any good. We're just not watching it.

In this telling, Geppetto (Dave Bradley) is a toy maker and sculptor in Italy ca. WWI. He has a devoted, obedient son, played by Gregory Mann. When the boy is killed by Allied bombers, Geppetto goes off the rails. After years of grieving, in a drunken fit he cuts the pine tree over his son's grave and tries to carve it into a new son. It is pretty much a botch when he collapses, but a good fairy (Tilda Swinton) with four wings covered in eyes like a biblically accurate angel, brings him to life and names him Pinocchio.

By the way, this story is narrated by the somewhat grandiloquent and learned cricket, Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor), who lived in a knothole in the pine. His home is now in Pinocchio's body. The fairy tasks him with looking after Pinocchio, which he is somewhat reluctant to do.  

This Pinocchio is not the obedient son that Geppetto once had. He's rambunctious and troublesome, smashing Geppetto's workshop out of sheer good spirits and the joy of being alive. Geppetto is horrified, and tries to lock him away, but Pinocchio follows him to church. The townsfolk are appalled by this monster, and the children bully him. Local Fascist leader Ron Perlman and his bully son, Finn Wolfhard, are the main instigators.

So when puppeteer and impresario Christoph Waltz recruits him for the show, Pinocchio is glad to go along. (It turns out the real talent and puppeteer is evil monkey Spazzatura, played by Cate Blanchett.) However, he is run over by a truck and dies - temporarily. Because he is not a real boy, he can't die, and Death lets him know he will be returned to earth every time he dies - but with a longer and longer time away each time. 

Meanwhile, Geppetto and Cricket have been searching for Pinocchio, and wind up inside a sea monster. Pinocchio can't rescue them, because he made fun of il Duce in the show, and got killed again.

There's a lot going on, visually and thematically in this movie. The stop-motion animation can be lovely and Pinocchio's character design is wacky and fun. Most everyone else is more grounded. I guess that emphasizes the more outrageous designs (see Spazzatura), but maybe reduces the fun a little. The themes of grief and parenthood, obedience and self-expression, the real and the immortal are interesting, but I thought the best part was Pinocchio's joy. He approached everything with an air of "Oh X, I love X, what is an X?" Whatever it is, he loves it and wants to live it. A good way for both puppets and real boys to live