At the end of the year, our film critics offer you their favorite of 2022. Second of three tickets.
There are those rare films that touch our hearts directly, each image of which seems to have been made for us and us alone. These films that we love beyond reason and reasonableness. Such lightning, that of the famous “coup de…”, fell on me from the first images of Pinocchio by Guillermo del Toro.
Agree, this feature film started with a few steps ahead. In its original version, written by Carlo Collodi and published in the early 1880s, Pinocchio is a tale that I cherish. And then, I greatly admire the work of Guillermo del Toro — yes, right down to Pacific Rim. That this story and this filmmaker come together in an animation technique that thrills me to the core — frame by frame, or stop-motion — propelled me to the pantheon of high expectations.
This, even if the work also left with two “takes” against it: two new versions have indeed landed on the screens in 2021-2022. One, formidable, signed Matteo Garrone. The other, furiously missed, carrying the paw of Robert Zemeckis. Could this be one too many? Was there a risk of acute “pinocchioitis”? No.
This Pinocchio nestles deeply in the world of Guillermo del Toro, whose shape he espouses with dazzling beauty: the most-really-blue-Fairy seems to emerge from Hellboy ; the story was transposed to Mussolini’s Italy, like an echo of that of the Pan’s Labyrinth which took place in Franco’s Spain; the creation of the puppet, on a stormy and drunken night (Geppetto is no longer a gentle crackpot, but an angry and grieving man), is more Frankenstein’s madness than a “Cinderellaesque” bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.
As for the story, if it retains its outline and its messages, it has been judiciously amputated from a few episodes and characters in order to dig in others, for better and even better. Pinocchio’s cricket-consciousness, for example. The horrifying insect, whose role gained momentum with the cartoon produced in 1940, ended up, in the original tale, quickly crushed against a wall. Here, del Toro and his co-screenwriter, Patrick McHale, wrote him a destiny and a purpose that goes far beyond lecturing the lying puppet. Thanks to him, the film leads not to an idyllic “father and son were thus happy until the end of time”, but to a bittersweet finale.
This Pinocchio is unquestionably, for me, the version that will remain. Like the best adaptations, it is faithful to the original while possessing its own character. And that is rare.