Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio Reconceptualizes What it Means to be a “Real Boy”

This story contains spoilers for Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio. If you haven’t watched yet, check out our spoiler-free review of the film.

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio is a lovingly dark, awe-inspiring fable of fear and imperfection. The three decade span of the imaginative director’s fantastical filmography has exposed the significance of the strange and the monstrous in relation to social oppression. And if the scope of Del Toro’s work is a chaotically sprouted, crackling tree like his lying wooden boy’s nose, then Pinocchio – like the oft-repeated motif of a pinecone throughout the film – is the breathing wooden heart at the core of a theme he’s been interrogating for years; strange, lost children, whose coming-of-age encounters with the uncanny reveals the fear that informs dominant, oppressive Western social structures.

In Pinocchio, that structure is Mussolini’s fascist Italy circa World War II, and the fear revealed is between imperfect fathers and imperfect sons, struggling through the pressure of power, greed, the archetypes that structure our expectations of each other, and the humane fear that can corrupt our capacity to support the people we love. Through his collaboration with co-director Mark Gustafson, co-writer Patrick McHale, and their team of dedicated stop-motion animators, Del Toro has filtered the essence of his artistic work into an intensely personal reworking of the classic fable.

Where older versions reward Pinocchio for his eventual obedience, and turn him into a flesh-and-blood human, Del Toro’s Pinocchio remains wiley, strange, and wooden. Del Toro reinterprets what it means for the titular character to become a “real boy” through a story that encourages imperfection, and counters the constricting structures that define fascist Italy with characters who learn to love one another for their idiosyncratic self-expression.

Pinocchio begins with Geppetto (David Bradley), a wood-carver, and his loving son Carlo (Gregory Mann). Their absolute devotion to one another is admired by their small, Italian town. Carlo is a model boy, charming, curious, and obedient. In a tragic turn, Carlo’s innocent retrieval of a pinecone in the town church leads tragically to his death by a fire bomb, dropped unceremoniously by a warplane looking to lighten its load, leaving only fractured wood, the pinecone solemnly rolling down the church steps, and Geppetto’s unfinished effigy of Jesus Christ.

Geppetto plants his son and the pinecone on the same hill, and grieves ceaselessly over the years while the pinecone becomes a tree. The tree attracts the story’s narrator, Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor), an uppity anthropomorphic insect who finds that the inside of the tree trunk is the perfect space to write a memoir. Geppetto’s grief, however, attracts fate, in the form of a mystic-blue Wood Sprite (Tilda Swinton), an amalgamation of angelic eyes, who takes pity on Geppetto as his grief tips into the drunken rage that begets Pinocchio’s birth.

Del Toro’s Pinocchio as a character is in purposeful, critical counterpoint to the Christian interpretation of Jesus Christ as the archetypal model of a Son, whose Father encourages him to endure remarkable pain for the sake of others. Jesus was immaculately conceived from the union of a chaste, brilliant woman, a Holy Spirit, and an all-knowing Father God. Pinocchio, by contrast, is violently conceived through the Frankensteinian clash of a grieving drunken wood carver, a dead Italian boy, and a hopeful, sentimental Wood Sprite. Cloaked in dark thunder and rain, Gepetto cuts down the tree that loomed over him throughout his obsessive grief, strikes at the bark and wood to carve out an unfinished puppet boy that both is and isn’t the image of Carlo, then passes out.

Sebastian, still nested in the trunk that becomes the wooden boy’s chest, initially sees Pinocchio as a house, an object to exact his own desires for fame. He’s convinced by the Wood Sprite to mentor Pinocchio in exchange for a future wish that will ensure fame for his memoirs. So, the Wood Sprite infuses the puppet with life-giving blue light, and Geppetto wakes up horrified to find that the alcohol-induced puppet he carved from the deepest pits of his grief and despair is alive and calling him Papa.

Geppetto and Sebastian are the first of the film’s repeating father figures who see their sons not as human beings with their own wants, wishes, and potential, but rather as tools, and vessels for their frustrated desires. Pinocchio, though connected to Carlo through unexplainably mystic soul ties, is nothing like Geppetto’s late first son. “What is it, what is it, what is it?” Pinocchio asks, lilting in dulcet tones while throwing carving knives and chamber pots around Gepetto’s house in pure, dangerous innocence. He scares the town with his unnatural existence, yells and begs for hot chocolate like a brat, and does the opposite of whatever Geppetto tells him to do. Pinocchio’s a bundle of contrasts; his curiosity and joy shakes Geppetto out of his complete despair, while his disobedience reawakens the stress of being responsible for another life, and reminds Geppetto of losing Carlo. The still-grieving Gepetto pressures Pinocchio to mimic Carlo’s deference. But in Mussolini’s Italy, where young boys are molded by the state into pawns of war, obedience makes Pinocchio more susceptible to the manipulative men who only see the wooden boy as a means to their selfish ends. 

Podesta (Ron Perlman), a war-hungry government official, takes early interest in Pinocchio as a potential soldier. And Count Volpe (Christoph Waltz), the shrewd but fading aristocratic circus ring-master, lures Pinocchio into performing war-time propaganda for children as a living puppet. Geppetto, Podesta, and Volpe, an unholy trinity of controlling fathers representing grief, power, and greed, respectively, play tug-of-war with the trusting Pinocchio throughout the story, and kill him repeatedly in the process.

In one of the more extreme changes in Del Toro’s adaptation, Pinocchio dies four times throughout the course of the story. His soul is sent to a blue-hued afterlife, where Death, the Wood Sprite’s sister/alter-ego, a moody Sphinx surrounded by the sands of time, defines the rules of his particular immortality. Each death summons a larger and larger hourglass, whose dripping sand Pinocchio has to wait for before he’s brought back to life. The circumstances of Pinnochio’s deaths reveal the different facets of fear that define the men responsible for him, which in turn reflect the different ways that a country steeped in fascism and war kills their sons. And for Pinocchio himself, death is an alternative to the fear that he’s a disappointment and a burden to the father he loves. If he can’t truly die, Pinocchio can gradually separate himself from attachment to others as time passes, and defend himself from the pain that comes from burdening his suffering father.

The pain of feeling like a burden to Geppetto causes Pinocchio to leave home and travel, where he encounters a pair of sons, whose struggles to connect with their own father figures reflects the sadness and fear that looms over Pinocchio’s relationship with Geppetto. Spazzatura (Cate Blanchett), the talented monkey puppeteer, is so hopeful for Count Volpe’s approval he suffers through physical beatings. And Candlewick (Finn Wolfhard), the human boy, suppresses his fear of war to mold himself into his father Podesta’s conception of an ideal soldier. Both Spazzatura and Candlewick are initially jealous of Pinocchio because of their fathers’ interest in him as a puppet they can perfectly control. But when Volpe’s and Podesta’s abuses conflict with Pinocchio’s morals, he defends his fellow sons, and gives them space to express their frustration and individuality. 

In one of the film’s most haunting sequences, Pinocchio resurrects from death by bullet to find that he’s been kidnapped and conscripted into a military training camp for Italian youth. Pinocchio and Candlewick, first at odds, eventually bond over their fear when Candlewick breaks down in tears from Podesta calling him weak. Pinocchio is reminded of Geppetto, who called him a burden out of stress and anger. But he also recalls Sebastian’s observation that fear causes fathers to sometimes say things they later regret, and offers Candlewick comfort.

This connection, between two boys trying to understand the relationship between their fear and their fathers’ fear, is then tested when Pinocchio and Candlewick are made into captains of opposing teams, armed with paint guns, in a game of capture the flag. When the boys joyfully celebrate Pinocchio and Candlewick’s tie, an infuriated Podesta gives Candlewick a gun and tells him to kill Pinocchio, taking advantage of his immortality to emotionally calcify his own son. Candlewick realizes that it’s impossible to ever meet his father’s approval, because Podesta sees him and the other boys as disposable. Candlewick rebukes becoming his father’s puppet, and rebels against him to help Pinocchio escape as another firebomb squad attacks their camp. 

Expression of emotion, and genuine connection, deter manipulation and physical abuse. Pinocchio, rebellious by nature, emboldens Candlewick and Spazzatura’s struggles to fight their fathers’ abuses, and in turn experiences first-hand the value in individual expression as a deterrent against the violent manipulation that informs fascism.

Of Del Toro’s other protagonists, Pinocchio has most in common with Nightmare Alley’s drifter-turned-clairvoyant, Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper). Stan, haunted by his patricide of his own cruel father, fills the void of his murder with his unique talent to overtly and arrogantly manipulate the people who believe in him. Kim Morgan’s and Del Toro’s script links World War II-era America’s deceptive lure of its young and vulnerable citizenry into the battle against fascism – and the escalation of American foreign intervention – to Stan, a man who never stops feeling like a burden, who craves the closeness and acceptance of his father, and who kills every surrogate father he comes across in his life. He is the tragic Pinocchio, an emotionally scarred liar who spirals into violence, abuse, and addiction. Nightmare Alley evokes the lingering effects of World War II by being an honest and critical depiction of the loop that feeds vulnerable boys into the Western super powers’ ouroboric chase for international control.

Pinocchio, though in many ways just as dark and honest, offers an alternative to Nightmare Alley’s world of fear. Pinocchio is a story about fear as well, but it’s also a story of how that fear can transform into love. Geppetto comes to regret calling Pinocchio a burden, and travels with Sebastian to chase after Volpe’s traveling circus in hopes of reuniting with Pinocchio. Geppetto is ultimately swallowed in the middle of the sea by a monstrous, eldritch deep-sea whale, but survives off the faith that the puppet he now accepts as his son will be drawn to search for him as well. Pinocchio and Spazzatura are also eaten by the whale, and reunite with Geppetto and Sebastian. Geppetto, through accepting Pinocchio as his son and encouraging his imperfections, cultivates an environment where Pinocchio can feel comfortable being himself. However, in the effort to escape the persistent sea monster, Pinocchio dies while Geppetto still floats unconscious in the sea water. In the afterlife, Pinocchio is presented with a decision; give up his immortality and become a real boy to save his father, or stay immortal, but lose Geppetto forever. 

Pinocchio, a wonderfully uncanny and monstrous being, could have become an immortal, emotionless automaton, dying and resurrecting in perfect obedience and service to fascist Italy. He was always a real boy, but the power of his choice to return a mortal soul and save his father comes from a love that’s only possible with the security of knowing that Geppetto accepts him for who he is. 

The film ends with Sebastian, who narrates the calm happiness with which Pinocchio cares for Geppetto, Spazzatura, and Sebastian, even as they reach their natural deaths. Pinocchio’s graceful acceptance of his loved ones’ mortality is a beautiful contrast to Gepetto’s inconsolable grief of Carlo, because it’s born from the comfort of acceptance, divorced from intense expectations or controlling desire. His ability to become a real boy had as much to do with his environment as it did the pressure he felt to mold into that environment. Pinocchio finally actualizes as his own person when he is certain that he can be himself and still be loved.