Forget Disney – this toy story has a dark heart
Pinocchio
Dir Matteo Garrone
Starring Federico Ielapi, Roberto Benigni, Rocco Papaleo, Massimo Ceccherini, Marine Vacth, Gigi Proietti, Alessio Di Domenicantonio, Maria Pia Timo
Tim Robey
The makers of the new, Italianlanguage Pinocchio know the text inside out – and I don’t mean Disney’s 1940 animated version, but the original novel, published in 1883 by the Italian humorist Carlo Collodi. There’s no wishing upon a star here, and zero cuddly business with Figaro, the adorable pet cat – nameless in Collodi’s book – who was Uncle Walt’s favourite character.
Instead, there’s a lot of grime, struggle and despair, and a much grittier story. Not five minutes after springing to life, the boy-puppet Pinocchio has thrown a mallet at the head of Jiminy Cricket, and then managed to burn off his own feet on
Geppetto’s stove. You can’t see a Disney animator storyboarding these ideas.
The director, Matteo Garrone, is a dab hand at both dark fantasy (Tale of Tales) and reportage about his country’s violent criminal underworld (Gomorrah). He aims to tread a fine line here in returning to the unsentimental spirit of Collodi’s fable, while appealing to a (slightly braver) family audience. While very much a PG treatment, it’s no stronger than that, and it was a sizeable hit last Christmas in Italy.
As Geppetto, Collodi’s hard-up carpenter, Roberto Benigni gracefully ushers the film through its practically neo-realist opening act. The character’s uncompromising poverty – he lives in a dingy hovel – comes as a startling contrast to the cosy hearth of his Disney counterpart, with all those cheeping clocks. Banished, too, is the overeager zaniness that blighted Benigni’s own long-forgotten 2002 Pinocchio, which he directed and in which he starred – a career-stunting box-office catastrophe.
After the awakening of this latest puppet, played under skilfully designed faux-wooden make-up by 10-year-old Federico Ielapi, the film’s main surprise is its rogue moral arc. Ielapi’s Pinocchio is an instant tearaway, and only later learns the error of his ways. Playing truant from school on his first day, he sneaks into a puppet roadshow, is embraced by a troupe of like-minded carved folk, and then finds himself preyed upon by the Fox (Massimo Ceccherini) and the Cat (Rocco Papaleo), a pair of whiskered rascals sniffing after the five gold pieces he foolishly admits he’s bringing back to his father.
Garrone honours the picaresque form of Collodi’s serials, romping with dogged, Gilliam-esque vigour around the Tuscan countryside. But the emotional tug, despite Benigni’s good work at the beginning and end, is never really there. There’s something almost miserly about Garrone’s culling of famous storytelling beats. Though Pinocchio tells plenty of fibs, there’s only one scene where the Blue Fairy (Marine Vacth) makes his nose grow. In one of the more interesting notes, his survival here means getting streetwise, not blurting out the truth to new and possibly unscrupulous acquaintances. In other words, he learns to lie.
But what became of the violent rebel child and cricket-assailant with whom we started out? The script has curious gaps and inconsistencies. Becoming a “real boy” is something this puppet only half-heartedly craves – more as a contractual obligation to the story than a calling.
It’s as if Garrone, rightly shy of an unearned sugar-rush, is loath to foreground that side of the character. Despite its lavish bounty of incident, this Pinocchio is an inconsequential epic, bustling along gallantly, but whittling away more than it adds.