“Animation is cinema, animation is acting, animation is art”, Guillermo Del Toro on his ‘Pinocchio’

When Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro first set out to make an animated version of pinocchio 15 years ago, he chose to set his film in Fascist Italy in the 1930s.

The characters of the elderly woodcarver Geppetto and his living puppet Pinocchio originated in an 1883 Italian novel and were popularized by the 1940 Disney film. But in the film Pinocchio by Guillermo del Torowhich will premiere on Netflix next month, live in the interwar world of Benito Mussolini.

“I wanted to (place the film in) a time when being a puppet was a good thing,” Del Toro said on the red carpet at AFI Fest, the festival of the American Film Institute, which took place in Hollywood over the weekend. .

“I wanted Pinocchio to be disobedient,” he added. “I wanted Pinocchio, who was the only puppet, not to act like a puppet. I thought thematically that was perfect.”

While the subject of fascism might seem timely in light of recent world politics, the filmmaker said his film was just as relevant when he conceived the project years ago.

In fact, del Toro has previously used his distinctive gothic fairy tales to tackle the specter of fascism with films like The Pan’s Labyrinth Y The Devil’s backboneboth set during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco in Spain (1939-1975).

“It’s something that worries me because it’s something that humanity seems to return to,” he said. “I’ve always seen it.” Fascism is “always alive in the background, or in the foreground,” she asserted.

“kaleidoscopic”

The Oscar-winning Mexican director presented his version of pinocchio to Hollywood studios and producers many years before streaming giant Netflix finally bought the rights in 2018. The film will premiere on December 9 on said platform.

“I’ve been fighting to get this done for half my career,” del Toro said. The film required more than a thousand days of shooting. It uses the painstaking method of ‘stop-motion’ animation, in which the puppets are carefully manipulated frame by frame to create the illusion of movement.

For Del Toro, the use of CGI was never an option.

“It was very pertinent for me to do a story about a puppet with puppets, and the puppets think they’re not puppets,” he said. “It’s kind of a very beautiful kaleidoscopic, telescopic thing.”

Although del Toro has long been fascinated by animation, he won his Oscars for best director and best picture for the live-action film. the shape of water of 2017, and pinocchio it is his first animated feature film.

“In North America, animation is seen a bit more as a children’s genre,” del Toro said. “One of the things that I think everyone is trying to change, not just us, is to say: ‘Animation is film, animation is acting, animation is art,’” he said.

Stop-motion animation can “touch things that are deeply moving and deeply spiritual,” but it is “a technique that is constantly on the brink of extinction,” he said. “Only kept alive by crazy fans…we keep it alive!”

His mother’s legacy

While the story of Pinocchio explores the bonds between father and son, del Toro became fascinated with the character as a child when his mother, with whom he was very close, introduced him to the mischievous puppet.

“I always collected Pinocchio things… My mother and I watched (the movie) together when I was very young, and she kept giving me Pinocchios all my life,” he recalled.

Del Toro’s mother passed away last month, just a day before the film’s world premiere in London. Del Toro then told the audience that they were about to see a movie “that has united me with my mom all my life.”

Guillermo del Toro’s “Pinocchio” will be available on Netflix worldwide starting December 9. The cast of voice actors for the film includes Ewan McGregor, Cate Blanchett, John Turturro, Christoph Waltz, and Tilda Swinton.

in frames

*Information from AFP