Del Toro wanted to make a film which “celebrates disobedience,” and he explained why at an event prior to the film’s world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival in October, which Newsweek attended.
Why Guillermo del Toro Wants ‘Pinocchio’ to ‘Celebrate Disobedience’
In del Toro’s reimagining of the fairytale, Pinocchio has to contend with not only the forces around him but also the dangers that comes from living under the thumb of Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime in World War II.
This was a historical context that felt right to be the backdrop of his film, the director explained, particularly because of the way in which he wanted Pinocchio’s story to develop.
“I think this movie for me is apiece with Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone, thematically,” del Toro said. “And the three movies for me [are about] childhood [coming up] against something that has to do with war and violence.
“I think, for me, it’s always been movies about fatherhood, being a father or being a son, and, in those iterations, fascism seems to be concerned with a father figure of a different kind, and the desire to deliver ourselves to a father that unifies and uniforms the thought. So I think it’s both a background and it’s interesting thematically.
“The other thing that was interesting to me is there is a reason why the movie has a possessory title, like, to me, there is Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, there’s Walt Disney’s Pinocchio, and there’s Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, because to me the interesting thing is ‘can I make a Pinocchio that celebrates disobedience, as opposed to celebrating obedience? Can I make a Pinocchio in which he doesn’t have to turn into a real boy because he was obedient at the end?’”
Del Toro added that in order to do this there were only “certain tenets that could work in there” such as standing against an authoritarian regime.
The Oscar-winning director explained that the film will explore fascism and Pinocchio’s defiance against it more and more as the movie goes on, with it becoming a particularly prevalent theme in the third act.
When asked about how the film also has a contemporary feel because it addresses this political ideology, del Toro said it was something he has been “concerned” about “for many, many years in [his] own reflection of who we are.”
“I think that I find it really a concern of mine thematically not because I can predict which way it’s gonna go, but because, unfortunately, these things come back,” he explained. “It’s cyclical, it’s not something that we’re going to see and then forget about, it’s a thing that people have a tendency to want to deliver themselves [to].
“There are moments in which that takes place, I think that there are a few tenets, or a few things that happen right before this type of thing happens. One of them is the distrust of science, to make art feel like an elite concern, and [to] throw populist myths etc. and the division between us.
“Giving each group a reason to hate another group to unify, there’s nothing that unifies socially more than a common enemy and those are things I think [have happened]. We have never been better communicated and more divided than right now, so these are the things I think, unfortunately, they tend to come back.”
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is out on Netflix now.
