Oscar Wilde wrote: “Children begin by loving their parents. Growing up, they begin to judge them. Sometimes they forgive them.” This is what Matteo Garrone’s Pinocchio is, a dark (too much) adaptation of the fairy tale of the same name, which is released in wide release on March 12.
Carpenter Geppetto has a hard time: a skilled craftsman, he balances on the verge between desperate poverty and impenetrable poverty, begging his neighbors for at least some work and frankly starving. To ensure a comfortable old age, Geppetto invents to make a wooden doll – one that the world has not yet seen. And pinocchio chimes. Not a toy, as originally planned, but a son.
The further plot is in general terms known to anyone who has read the immortal fairy tale by Carlo Collodi or seen the Disney cartoon (which, by the way, turns 80 this year). Relying on a literary source, director Matteo Garrone (Gomorrah, Scary Tales) creates his own world – infinitely beautiful, but populated by frankly creepy characters (no matter how these words sounded in an era of rejection of conventional ideas about beauty). They, these characters, rebel and love, take care of each other and make mistakes, teach and lie, but most importantly, they serve as a clear illustration of the problem of fathers and children, the conflict of generations.
The older generation – conditionally, parents – are ready to give the last thing for the sake of their offspring: lunch, clothes. In general, they are accustomed to endure and easily put up with hardships: for example, Geppetto surprisingly quickly and even with a certain comfort settles down in the womb of a sea monster that swallowed him. They are scared, and it seems pointless to change something (now we call it learned helplessness), and they demand obedience and respect from their offspring: “I barely had time to bring you into the world, and you no longer respect your dad! This is a bad start, my son! Very bad!”
Not all advice is unambiguously bad, but as long as they are heard from the lips of “old people”, they are unlikely to be of any use.
Such appeals to conscience only annoy the latter: they strive for freedom and intend to do only what they want, stuffing a catastrophic number of cones on the way to this freedom. Each of their reckless steps reveals the worst nightmares of any parent: that an unreasonable gullible child will get lost or, worse, leave with strangers. To the circus, to the magical Land of Toys, to the Field of Wonders. What awaits them next – everyone can speculate, surrendering to the power of their own fantasies and anxiety.
Parents try to warn children, spread straws, give advice. And, admittedly, not all advice is unequivocally bad, but as long as they are heard from the lips of “old people” – for example, a cricket who has spent more than a hundred years in the same room – they are unlikely to be of any use.
But in the end it doesn’t matter. Placing exorbitant hopes on the child, making his own parental mistakes, the old carpenter Geppetto still manages to raise a son who is able and ready to take care of him in old age. And grow him a man in every sense of the word.