Pinoc­chio

You prob­a­bly think you know this sto­ry. It’s been told on screen before, includ­ing a 1972 TV minis­eries star­ring Vit­to­rio de Sica as a judge, and is being revived again in stop-motion by Guiller­mo del Toro and as a live-action remake of the 1940 Dis­ney clas­sic by Robert Zemeck­is. It’s sur­pris­ing that, giv­en the tale’s ori­gins, there hasn’t been a suc­cess­ful big-bud­get Ital­ian adap­ta­tion until now. It’s a shame, then, that Mat­teo Gar­rone​’s ver­sion will be over­shad­owed by Eng­lish-lan­guage takes.

Gar­rone and Mas­si­mo Ceccherini’s screen­play sticks close­ly to Car­lo Collodi’s orig­i­nal sto­ry, pub­lished in 1883, which is even dark­er than the dis­turb­ing Dis­ney ver­sion. Beyond don­key trans­for­ma­tions and ter­ri­fy­ing whales, the epony­mous mar­i­onette him­self is ini­tial­ly an unlike­able hero who runs away from his cre­ator, Gep­pet­to, as soon as he’s giv­en legs.

Collodi’s orig­i­nal end­ing had Pinoc­chio hung by the Fox and the Cat as a warn­ing to naughty chil­dren, an event dis­turbing­ly staged in the film, although at the insis­tence of his edi­tor Col­lo­di revived the char­ac­ter for more sto­ries about his path to redemp­tion. Giv­en the gris­ly anthol­o­gy of fables Gar­rone used in Tale of Tales, it’s hard­ly sur­pris­ing his take on Pinoc­chio errs more on the side of Col­lo­di than Disney.

Hav­ing direct­ed a flopped 2002 ver­sion, for which his Pinoc­chio was bizarrely dubbed over in Eng­lish by Seth Mey­ers, Rober­to Benig­ni is bet­ter suit­ed to an actor’s life here as Gep­pet­to. While we assume he is carv­ing the mag­ic pup­pet in the open­ing scene, he is instead free­ing what few edi­ble crumbs he can sal­vage from a rind of cheese.

Unlike the boun­ti­ful busi­ness of Disney’s toy­mak­er, Gar­rone is unafraid to bring the adult grit of his urban dra­mas like Gomor­rah or Dog­man to this fam­i­ly-friend­ly sojourn. When a crick­et shows up try­ing to serve as his con­science, Pinoc­chio lobs a mal­let at his head before he can so much as give a lit­tle whis­tle. He’s cer­tain­ly got no strings.

While the detailed pros­thet­ics on Fed­eri­co Ielapi make him almost too humanoid to be a pup­pet, it makes him eas­i­er to empathise with than the fright­en­ing wood­en doll used in Steve Baron’s 1996 The Adven­tures of Pinoc­chio. Giv­en the film clocks in at just over two hours, it’s a tes­ta­ment to Ielapi’s infan­tile charm that our engage­ment is sus­tained. It feels like an exten­sion of Garrone’s own invest­ment in the sto­ry – he claims to have drawn the first sto­ry­board when he was six years old.

Pinoc­chio is a cel­e­bra­tion of a fan­tas­ti­cal world seen through a child’s eyes, smat­tered with boy­ish humour such as a squeaky-voiced pro­fes­sor try­ing to get a frog out of his pants. The result is a visu­al feast of can­dy-coloured cir­cus­es and breath-tak­ing prac­ti­cal effects from talk­ing tuna fish and bun­ny under­tak­ers to a giant snail maid and a mar­i­onette show. Gar­rone makes every set piece feel like a dream come true.

By the time the Fairy with Turquoise Hair (Marine Vacth) turns Pinoc­chio into a human boy, we’ve long since for­got­ten his ear­ly mis­be­hav­iour. It’s a beau­ti­ful moment, a sim­ple mes­sage of redemp­tion that affirms the tale’s time­less rel­e­vance. While its suc­cess out­side Italy remains to be seen, del Toro and Zemeck­is will have to pull a lot of strings to bet­ter Garrone.