Concerns that did not bother the filmmaker, who from the beginning made it very clear that this was his Pinocchio. It didn’t take long for us to understand what he meant.
The premise is the same as we all know: a lonely man carves a puppet, it receives the gift of life and dreams of being real. The road, however, will not be easy, because in order to make his wish come true he must learn to be a good person in a world bent on corrupting him. Fortunately, he has the support of a noble talking cricket who helps him make the best decisions! Although following them is not always easy for you…
It’s all there and yet, Guillermo del Toro’s film remains one of a kind.
Proof of this was when it was revealed that the actions would take place in Italy. Not Carlo Collodi’s, but Benito Mussolini’s fascist. A relative surprise when we remember that the Mexican has always shown great interest in fighting tyranny with innocence. He did it in The Shape of Water, which won him the Oscar for Best Picture and Director, but also in Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone. Special mention for these last two, which many consider part of an unofficial trilogy that now seems to reach its culmination.
No less important was when the director assured that his story was partially inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. “I have always been very intrigued by his links,” he confessed in an interview with Vanity Fair . “Both are a child who is thrown into the world. Both are created by a father who later expects them to discover what is good, what is bad, ethics, morals, love, life and the essentials, on his behalf. I think that was, for me, childhood.
You had to figure it out with your very limited experience.” An assertion that also made us think that the wooden boy would be another monster from Guadalajara. One of the most representative elements in his work and that was confirmed when the advances showed the reactions of fear and nervousness when the titular puppet appears before society.
And of course, the use of stop motion.