“I saw the Disney movie when I was very, very young and it made a big impression,” Guillermo del Toro said at a panel for Pinocchio by Guillermo del Toro at Deadline’s Contenders: The Nominees event, where he was joined by director Mark Gustafson. “What bothered me was the idea that to be a real boy you had to obey and turn into something you didn’t love.”
Del Toro’s Netflix adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s story is set in 1930s Italy during Benito Mussolini’s fascist rule. In this story, woodcutter Geppetto (David Bradley) loses his son Carlo in an air raid and cuts Pinocchio (Gregory Mann) from a tree near his son’s grave.
For del Toro and Gustafson, this film could only be shot in stop motion. “Stop-motion screams are handmade, and screams are hand-carved and painted,” del Toro said. “There’s something sly about it, and there’s something magical about seeing these dolls.”
“You can create a world that’s very homogeneous and feels like it all belongs together,” Gustafson added. “And you can have a character like Pinocchio who is such a weirdo, but he kind of fits into the imagery of this world.”
The story focused heavily on multiple father-son relationships, but del Toro says the most important relationship for Pinocchio came from an unlikely mother figure. “We made the film based on father-son stories, but whoever is directing is the mother figure of death,” he said.
“She has the best understanding of Pinocchio of anyone in the film,” Gustafson said, “whereas Geppetto, his real father, doesn’t and in many ways learns the story of the whole film, which is his journey – how can I love this thing.” Is this not what I expected? I prayed for a miracle, I got a miracle, but I don’t recognize the miracle.”
“It’s not Pinocchio learning to be a real son, it’s Geppetto learning to be a real father,” del Toro said. “The movie can be called The Adventures of Geppetto. We start with the one who cannot accept a loss and we end with the loss by accepting it. It’s a very beautiful journey to accept the imperfection and beauty of the son he has, not the son he would like to have.”
Check back Monday for the panel video.
Source: Deadline
Ashley Root is an author and celebrity journalist who writes for The Fashion Vibes. With a keen eye for all things celebrity, Ashley is always up-to-date on the latest gossip and trends in the world of entertainment.
