Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio themes

Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Pinocchio’ deals with the themes of love and death.

The 58-year-old Mexican filmmaker is proud of his stop-motion take on Carlo Collodi’s 1883 story and says it has parallels to today’s world.

He explained: “I thought it was important to deal with how briefly we have each other and how life is made valuable by death, which are concepts that are very, very Mexican, but [ones] that, ultimately, I believe in.

“The film is thematically about different types of fatherhood — what it is to be a father, what it is to be a child. And there are different types of parental figures in the movie. Some are lethal, some are exploitative, some are permeable to love. And, finally, a very paternalistic concern is the fascist idea of the Fatherland and the father-figure style of leadership.

““I was hoping to talk about things that were very important for me and that would reflect today. One of the things that I cherish as a virtue is disobedience. I thought that the idea of Pinocchio behaving as a free agent and a disobedient soul in a time when obedience is expected of everyone would be very important, especially in a moment like now.”

del Toro also revealed that ‘Pinocchio’ won’t be his last time working on animation.

He said: “My hope right now is to slow down, and the ideal place to slow down for me is animation, because it is far more my speed. We were able to react to the material on a week-to-week basis. We were able to re-board sequences, we were able to add sequences. It is really a beautiful pace that is more deliberate, but also just simply more organic to the way I like to make movies. I intend to, if I can, transition between live action and animation, and slowly but surely lean toward animation.”