Pinocchio made me cry
A ramble into morality plays and the wonderful storytelling of Guillermo del Toro
Hi all,
It feels like a gulf of time has passed since I last wrote this newsletter - in reality it’s been a fortnight, but perhaps a few weeks since I’ve found my way back to joyously writing, ya know.
What’s happened since then? Well I cried at Pinocchio (see below) and felt numb at the heartbreak of Aftersun. I was angry at the misadvertising of Corsage, not the jolliest of films to watch on New Year's Day. I have been to two meditation classes at my local Buddhist centre and found immense reassurance in a group of people also curious about why we’re here and how we can cultivate more compassion. I was alarmed to find out during one of these talks that even a Buddhist order is not immune to a history of abuse.
Here's an essay I have fever-dream-written on Pinocchio and morality plays. I would really urge you to watch the film, feel the feels and read the essay.
Take care,
Eden
Balm for the week
If you enjoyed my newsletter on Marling a lil while ago, then I’m delighted that our MEDUSA talk on Sanctuary, Self Esteem and Laura Marling is now available to watch (for free)!
This forms our commission for Durham University's Student Art Prize 2023, exploring how these declarative songwriters cultivate, explode and reframe sanctuary in their writing.
You can watch the video here! I'd love to know what you think and please commission me to do more.
Pinocchio offers up all the life lessons we need
** Spoilers - go watch the film on Netflix first! **
I saw Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio at the weekend. In a very nice hotel screening room that had bright orange armchairs, free refreshments, and a proper towel in the toilet (thanks Éloïse for your film school perks).
It's just struck me that the film functions much like a medieval morality play. An allegory (a story that reveals a hidden meaning). I'm now very excited by the prospect of picking apart why.
For those of you new to the wonders of Guillermo del Toro's work, the Mexican filmmaker is fascinated with folklore, childhood, paternity, fascism and horror. This stop-motion animation is no different, albeit more dialled down on the gore front than The Devil's Backbone (tentatively on my 'To Watch' list) and Pan's Labyrinth.
Medieval morality plays were traditionally used by the Church to teach their uneducated (code: majority) population about the doom of displeasing God and the feudal order, as well as the enduring struggle for the salvation of their soul. That death is infinitely more important than life. I studied one at university of which I can remember very little (the content wasn't actually that juicy if you ask me).
Morality plays are the formulaic fore-bearers of Renaissance dramas like Doctor Faustus and Hamlet, before Protestantism took firm hold in Norther parts of Europe along with wider existential questioning on the covenant between each individual and God. So it's no surprise that del Toro, who grew up in Mexico, unpicks a notion of the soul very much associated with Catholicism, and that of course, knowingly or not, he would hark right back to the morality play tradition. del Toro is not a fan of the Church as a means of power, though, and throughout his filmography the artist is unflinching in laying bare its relationship to fascist and autocratic power. Tellingly set in pre-WW2 fascist Italy, Pinocchio implicitly places two antagonists, the Priest and Fascist party member, Podesta, together as they seek to control the townsfolk.
But that is just a side plot. Pinocchio takes a man who has been labelled a model citizen - Geppetto - and explores what happens when that social fabric breaks down. What lays on the other side of compliance? Indeed, when Pinocchio comes crashing into Geppetto's life, a wooden gangly awkward boy with the purest smile and strongest will, it becomes clear that his life cannot continue 'in the shadows', as it were. Caring for - or incarcerating - a child who cannot physically look and behave like the others, both ostracised and revered, it's easy to see the comparisons del Toro is making to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. But what moved me most was the redemptive nature of compassion that this wooden little fool plays up. He is so beautifully, painfully, innocent. Looking up at the wooden Christ in the church, he asks 'He's made of wood too. Why do they like him and not me?'. Right down to the simple construction of his face, which splits wide open with gummy smiles and grimaces, Pinocchio represents the child within all of us. Such unrivalled joy, such despair, in a flash. Rather than learning to obey unchecked power, he learns to speak love to it.
This is a film that explodes the phrase, 'curiosity killed the cat'. A visual enactment of travel, adventure, loss and learning, meant to settle in the minds of revellers at religious festivities, the journey within a morality play is as important as its conclusion. We see Pinocchio skip off to the circus, crash down to the underworld, and even land plop in the belly of a sea creature. This is classical and biblical allusions 101, ahhhh I love it. The songs feel out of place, bursting out of nowhere, perhaps if nothing else, fun for the sake of it (and surely we need a bit of fun). There's camp fascist war songs, whimsical ballads, and crystalline kid's nursery rhymes. I cannot unhear a friend mockingly singing 'My Sonnnn, My Sonnn'.
Along this adventure, like the protagonist of a morality play, the characters of Pinocchio meet personified, other-worldly, figures, like the Wood Sprite, giver of life, and her sister, Death. These fantastical creatures make reference to angels, demons, snakes, sphinxes, and even Lewis Carrol's White Rabbit. They are wisdom incarnate, teaching the players about the fragility of life, the importance of love, and the cost of sacrifice. Death schools Pinocchio that 'the one thing that makes life precious, you see, is how brief it is'.
While morality plays function as a cautionary tale not to follow the same path into temptation, del Toro offers a refreshing take. Rather than repent and expel sin with shame, the filmmaker, asks us to redeem ourselves. To step into the light. And this is a torch that hinges on loving paternal relationships, the inverse of a fairytale that celebrates the patriarchal bedrock of numbness, strength, domination.
We are shown three intimate and imperfect father figures, all with sons desperate to make them proud. Pinocchio, Candlewick and Spazzatura each offer up their light to their fathers: being the perfect soldier, the perfect circus assistant, the perfect replacement son. And each of them is rejected, cast aside, belittled for no fault of their own. My heart broke so many times in that cinema, all those bids for connection, dismissed. This is an allegory where these young men find brotherhood in one another, caring for their pain, and bravely challenging the tyranny of their fathers (how nice).
But these fathers are not unfeeling robots, 'sometimes they feel despair like everyone else'. And while the officer, Podesta, and circus master, Count Volpe, function primarily as antagonists, in Geppetto we see a redemption arc, as he acknowledges the consequences of his actions and sets out to find Pinocchio. Unlike previous adaptations, the innocent Pinnochio need not curb his lies, and instead it is the suffering men around him that must interrogate the stories they tell themselves. Our protagonist, alternatively, discovers the wonder of simply being himself. We see Pinocchio’s grace grow through the kindness he offers Candlewick, the protection of Spazzatura, and ultimately, in giving his life to save his Papa (sound familiar?). It's at that point I cried intermittently for the rest of the film, which is paced superbly at the end. Feel after feel.
While we all love a romp into a fairytale land, del Toro's work is undeniably rooted in the challenges of today. The unflinching devastation of traumatic father-son relationships which cause so much pain to individuals and society, the pervasiveness of power, and the attempts to quash the light within us all. But, like Pinocchio, there is always potential for love. And love does not sit in learning how to be a good boy, like the traditional fairytale. It leaps like an uncorrupted flame deep within all of us, in need of protecting at all costs and activated by acts of kindness. It is remembering what a wonder it is to be alive. That is the true lesson of Pinocchio, how to find the light, again. Because life happens so fast, and 'what happens, happens, and then, we are gone'.