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Branching Out: Guillermo del Toro’s Transformation of an Evergreen Tale

By Cornelia Funke

Essays—

Dec 13, 2023

Branching Out: Guillermo del Toro’s Transformation of an Evergreen Tale
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Through the ages, some tales have spread their seeds like trees, creating forests of imagination. Fairy tales often have that quality. But I doubt that Carlo Collodi, the author of the 1883 novel Pinocchio, would like his story to be called a fairy tale. He wrote it with clear intentions: to support his dream of another Italy, freed from Austrian rule and governed by democracy, which was only possible with children who went to school instead of working in the fields, thereby liberating themselves from the poverty of their parents through education.

Carlo Lorenzini—or Collodi, as he called himself later on, after the home village of his mother—was the son of a seamstress and a cook. Carlo witnessed six of his ten siblings die before they reached the age of seven. Some believe that Pinocchio’s blue-haired fairy, who saves the protagonist after he is hung from a tree, was inspired by Marianna Seconda, a sister Carlo lost when she was only six years old. Or was it Giovanna, the daughter of the gardener at a summer house that the writer’s brother rented, as she was also around six years old and must have brought back memories of Marianna? Whoever the muse was, she instilled the theme of loss into the fabric of Pinocchio.

The marquise whom Carlo’s parents served offered to send him to school, but the boy didn’t want to become a priest, as his patron suggested—doesn’t that sound familiar? Instead, he worked at a bookstore and became a writer. Collodi had a rebellious mind, and he was willing to fight for his beliefs, another trait he would give to his wooden hero. Collodi became a soldier twice to help make his dream of a united Italy come true. It did, but as a kingdom instead of a democracy. Disillusioned, he turned to words in order to fight for his ideas. He worked as a journalist and published satirical magazines, and one day he began to write for a children’s newspaper, where Pinocchio made his first appearance.

I was a teenager when I first read the book, and I cried my eyes out. One late scene especially haunted me. Pinocchio finds a donkey on its last legs, starved and worked to death by its owner. I felt like kneeling beside Pinocchio when he realizes the abused animal is his friend Candlewick, who, along with many other boys trying to escape school, had turned into a donkey. We meet Candlewick in Guillermo del Toro’s 2022 film adaptation too. There is no living storyteller I admire more than del Toro, but I admit that at first I dreaded the idea of watching his take on Pinocchio—especially because I was afraid to see the donkey scene rendered through his powerful and unforgettable images. It turned out, though, that in del Toro’s adaptation Candlewick suffers a different transformation.

Poverty, hunger, and a life of toiling in the fields—Collodi’s nightmares are quite different from the ones that del Toro finds in the tale of the wooden boy. In his interpretation, school is not a place of enlightenment and liberation. Del Toro doesn’t believe in obedience as the foundation of a good father-son relationship. Parental love is a son’s right, not something he has to earn by becoming exactly what his father wants him to be. Geppetto and Carlo, his human son; Geppetto and Pinocchio—in del Toro’s film, they have a dark mirror image in Candlewick and his Fascist father. Fathers do not always love their sons; sometimes they break them. Del Toro leaves no doubt about that. But he also shows that sons sometimes teach their fathers to love. Even when they are made from wood.

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Del Toro has always been a master at unmasking political realities with fairy tales. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) is brilliant proof of how fantasy can reveal the cold heart of fascism and the prize—and obligation—of resistance. This time, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini watches a puppet show and is shocked by our wooden hero’s missing strings and his rebellion. Candlewick’s father was probably already a Fascist before he officially became one. In this retelling of Pinocchio, schools and churches grow the dark seeds of dictatorship and war with their demands of obedience, as do fathers who cannot love their children.

Looking at other film adaptations, Matteo Garrone’s 2019 version probably comes closest to Collodi’s original tale and message. It shows the poverty in rural Tuscany—and the donkey scene, Collodi’s brilliant metaphor for the fate that awaits workers who can’t read or write and toil away their lives, barely earning enough to feed their families. But Pinocchio even charms us as an American boy in the 1940 Disney film, where no hint of poverty or fascism can be found. The wooden boy whose nose grows when he lies, who falls down and gets back on his carved feet with a smile—one can’t help but love him.

Is that the true reason why his story seems immortal? Collodi definitely loved him, although he tried to show him as a boy who misbehaves and needs to be taught. But every word betrays his love for Pinocchio’s rebellious nature, his lust for life, his innocence and trust in people, his heart, so big despite all the selfish mistakes he makes. Nevertheless, I don’t think Pinocchio’s father loved and understood him as well as del Toro does.

I wish I could invite Collodi to the old cinema we have here in Volterra, Tuscany. I would like to see his face while del Toro’s film plays and he sees his story grow like Pinocchio’s nose, bringing forth hundreds of new leaves. Would he murmur, “This is very different from my tale”? Would he think, like me: Hmm. That pinecone, the motive of the lost son, and the wood from his tree—that’s utter genius?

Del Toro’s Pinocchio is not a boy who misbehaves, but one whose innocence makes him see the world as it truly is. And he is so full of joy that he nearly explodes into splinters! He is rebellious, courageous, and loving, and—most important—he dares to say no even when all the others say yes. Del Toro makes us wish for more Pinocchios in our time, with fascism newly ascendant all over the world and the gap between rich and poor widening, leaving ever more power in the hands of a few. He shows that obedience and conformism are far more dangerous than Pinocchio’s wide-eyed questioning: “Why?”

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In some ways, this adaptation is the first version of the story that is truly for children. And is that really a surprise? So many associate darkness with del Toro’s work, but for me the most stunning aspect of his storytelling has always been his fierce belief in kindness and selfless courage. His films, though, never hide the fact that these qualities usually come with great sacrifice. And that is true for this movie as well. Pinocchio sacrifices his last life for his father. But . . . hurrah! He comes alive again thanks to the cricket (whom Pinocchio kills in Collodi’s book—in some ways, it is still the darkest rendition of the tale).

I admit I am really grateful that del Toro didn’t turn Pinocchio into a “real” boy—thank goodness! He is still allowed to be himself. And he gets the happiest of endings, better than in all the other adaptations.

Did Guillermo del Toro, the master of dark things, realize how desperately we need hope in these times? Or does he just love this wooden boy too much to let him die? I think it is the latter.

Cornelia Funke is a German storyteller and illustrator, published in more than forty languages. She lives in Volterra, Tuscany.

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