Returning to the fantasy land of TALE OF TALES (2015), Italian aesthete Matteo Garrone's live-action reimagining of the proverbial yarn of PINOCCHIO, successfully lures Roberto Benigni out of his retirement, but the pungent irony is, 17 years ago, Benigni's own highly anticipated follow-up to his crown jewel LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (1997), PINOCCHIO (2002) is a turkey, virtually toppled him off his pedestal overnight, a blow he hasn't rallied ever since, therefore, his casting does hint a belated reconciliation .
This time around, instead of the titular puppet, a raddled Benigni nerves himself to the role of Geppetto, the hardscrabble carpenter who carves Pinocchio (Ielapi) out of a piece of animate timber, and plays him in full-bore earnest and pathos (no more clownish levity to elicit cheap laughter). Geppetto is elated and proud of finally becoming a father, only to lose in touch with his son on the first day of school, when Pinocchio plays truant and goes to a puppet show instead, whereupon he comes in for the school of hard knocks, until finally reunites with his maker (in the belly of a sea monster, nonetheless) and eventually becomes a real boy with flesh and flood thorough sincere redemption.
Chiefly angling to moralistically impart school-age kids the importance of education, behaving proper, retaining a kind heart and earning one's living with honest work, among other things, Carlo Collodi's 19th century tall tale actually possesses abundant sinister elements that might not be viewed as appropriate by overprotective parents, and Garrone makes no bones about showing them explicitly, Pinocchio is subjected to kidnap, pecuniary bunco, transformation into a donkey and toiling in the circus, and then eaten alive by a behemoth, not to mention two murder attempts (one by hanging and another by drowning), only courtesy to his guardian angel, a blue-haired fairy (Vacth and Calabria, playing her adult and child manifestations respectively), he can luck out to the happy ending.
What simply works here is the reification of a mythical realm that is inhabited by both humans and zoomorphic beings, from the first glimpse of Pinocchio, a young boy seems to be entirely enclosed by a wooden veneer, it is difficult to tell this vivid effect is generated by special makeup artifice or digital rendering in the post-production (the result is a synergy of both though), and the whole impression goes a bit uncanny when Pinocchio joins other human-size, string-attached puppets, grotesquery is on show but no malignancy is brewing underneath, the real menace and treachery is in the presence of Fox and Cat (Ceccherini, the co-scribe and Papaleo), epitomizing the vice of adulthood, plus a sideswipe about the injustice that deems innocence as a crime.
Scarcely resisting temptations from curiosity, cupidity and juvenile horseplay, Pinocchio is a scam of the first water, but Garrone's felicities of imagery and imagination tenderly sweeten the pill during his adventure, not masking a child's innate, sparkling merits amid his fibbing and reckless propensities, that makes for a worthwhile adaptation transcending a kid's book into a cinematic voyage with both heart and soul.
referential entries: Garrone's TALE OF TALES (2015, 7.2/10); Benigni's LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (1997, 8.4/10).
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