Author's judgement: 2/5
The adventures of the most famous puppet in the world created by Mastro Geppetto and who wanted to become a child: between the Fire Eater, the Talking Cricket, the Cat and the Fox, Lampwick and all the other characters that made him one of the most popular children's stories in the world. Let's talk about Pinocchio by Matteo Garrone, just released in theaters and destined to be one of the Christmas movies. There's little to say about the story: it's easy to imagine that almost all of us have had to deal with the puppet with the long nose when he was telling lies.
All kinds of things happen to him: he runs away from home, doesn't want to go to school, joins a theater of other puppets who, unlike him, have the thread that binds them and commands them, is robbed by the cat and the fox, imprisoned, swallowed by a whale, saved by the fairy with blue hair, transformed into a donkey and, finally, by the same fairy, transformed into a real child who will embrace Geppetto again and they lived together happily ever after.
We were lucky enough to see the film in the company of a 9-year-old granddaughter who, live, was able to express the emotions she was feeling and to whom, at the end of the screening, we asked her if she liked it: yes, but no big deal enthusiasm. Well, the look of the little girl in front of this question perfectly expressed the caliber of Garrone's film. A work that has not aroused emotions, without poetry, without imagination and without magic.
First the characters: Mastro Geppetto is Roberto Benigni who didn't seem to be at his best, if only because we have already seen him in the same Pinocchio film he directed where he played the reverse part. The stage make-up has well masked a role that is perhaps tired by now and just can't give Geppetto the weight he deserves. Then the child/puppet: with all sympathy for the young actors, but some are good others less so and in this case he seemed particularly awkward and with a slightly annoying dialectical tone in some moments.
And so on for the other minor characters. But it is evident that, as usual, the problem is who directs the actors, of those who write the texts, of those who have in mind a way of narrating with images capable of touching the heart, the mind, the imagination. Although everything was known and taken for granted down to the details by those who, now adults, still remember the story of Pinocchio, it was legitimate to expect something more and better than what we have already seen.
In fact, we must not forget first of all what, in our opinion, is a masterpiece by Luigi Comencini broadcast on Rai television screens in six episodes in 1972 (repeated ten years later) with actors of the caliber of Nino Manfredi (Geppetto), Gina Lollobrigida (the fairy), Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia (the cat and the fox). Any comparison is unthinkable: made in black and white, with special effects of the time and produced for a television audience.
But the substantial difference, as far as memory still helps us, is in the expectation and in the emotions that were aroused. Subsequently, in 2002, Roberto Benigni directs and writes the screenplay (with the prestigious participation of Vincenzo Cerami) of the best known film edition and realizes what is considered one of the most expensive films in the history of Italian cinema without then having the hoped-for success (it didn't even manage to be nominated for an Oscar).
This Pinocchio is fragile in the human story, in the metaphor of the existence of individuals on this earth, even if they are "made of wood", the boundary between good and evil, beautiful and ugly, good and bad is not highlighted and In the end, they all look a bit alike. Collodi, the author of the real Pinocchio, told us another story that Garrone, also attentive to the slums of feelings (just remember Gomorrah and Dogman), in this case he didn't seem able to do it with equal skill.
Sin. You missed a good opportunity to review the long-nosed puppet that you could still say a lot new and current and useful for this country.
