Category Archives: War

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio                   5 stars

Pinocchio by Academy Award winner Guillermo del Toro is not your Disney’s Pinocchio. It is not at all like the underwhelming live action Disney version that came out the same year (starring Tom Hanks). Del Toro’s movie is done with creative stop motion animation using physical carved figures and has a very dark aspect to it. There are the same basic elements from the original 1883 story by Carlo Collodi. It opens with Geppetto (David Bradley), the carpenter losing the son he loves, only here it is due to a stray bomb dropped from a war plane during World War II. It is set during the reign of Benito Mussolini, who we actually get to meet at one point. Pinocchio (Gregory Mann) was carved by Geppetto out of grief and was brought to life by some magic spirits. He has some very bad habits, always getting into trouble breaking things and skipping school like someone with ADHD. Like the original story his adventures include joining the circus and encountering a giant fish at sea and having a tiny cricket friend (Ewan McGregor) who looks out for him. In this version Pinocchio is crudely carved and is very puppet-like, with a large head and narrow limbs so that it is obvious he is made of wood. He would not be described as cute. And since he is very gullible it is easy for a carnival master (Christoph Waltz) to persuade him to join the circus. When it is learned that Pinocchio can be brought back to life after being killed, the local Podestà (Ron Perlman) sees that he will make the perfect soldier for the Fascist cause and forces him to join the army. He goes on to meet Il Duce who is not amused by Pinocchio’s antics so promptly shoots him! Each time he “dies” he is instructed by the Blue Fairy (Tilda Swinton) about his fate and the choices he is faced with. The movie has more violence than the Disney versions but even so is still suitable for children. It still has the same positive messages of the importance of love and family like the other versions. It is a natural story for del Toro to tackle adding it to his previous dark fantasy movies like Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water. It is very deserving of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature it received.

The Zone of Interest

The Zone of Interest                       4 ½ stars

Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest is such an unconventional movie it’s hard to compare it to anything we have seen coming out of Hollywood. The subject is of course the Holocaust set in Auschwitz, the concentration camp in Poland during World War II. Holocaust movies have been a staple of Hollywood going back at least to Schindler’s List in 1993, but Glazer has done something with these horrors that we haven’t seen before. The focus is entirely on the day to day lives of the Commandant of the camp, Rudolph Höss (Christian Friedel), and his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller of Anatomy of a Fall) and their family who live in their house and garden right outside the walls of the infamous camp. We watch as the family goes on outings to a lake or host get-togethers with their neighbors and Rudolph’s colleagues or attends to their children. Throughout the movie we never see any of the victims of the atrocities, but there are constant reminders as we see the walls of the camp in the background, see the smoke belching from the tall smokestacks and hear the sounds of gunshots and dogs barking in the distance. The cameras are set up in fixed positions inside the house making it seem like we are watching a reality show, spying on the inhabitants instead of watching a dramatic movie. There are few dramatic moments and that is the point that Glazer is making. He is showing us just how normal and mundane are the lives of those perpetrating one of history’s greatest crimes. There are scenes designed to make it clear that the family is completely aware of what is going on such as the wives distributing baby clothes and women’s dresses taken from the camp inmates, or when Hedwig threatens her young prisoner servant with execution if she doesn’t perform her tasks better. One son collects teeth with gold fillings. Later on, we see a scene with Nazi officials in a meeting in Berlin calmly discussing plans to send more Jews to the death camps with corporate like efficiency. This all serves to remind us of what is termed the banality of evil, how those involved can become blind to the evil of what is being perpetrated, though it is obvious to the rest of us. As I alluded to before, there is no normally constructed story here, but rather a portrayal of the rationalization of the characters’ actions. Jonathan Glazer has demonstrated how unconventional he can be before. One just has to go back to his previous movie, 2013’s Under the Skin, the “alien invasion” movie in which the alien predator portrayed by Scarlett Johansson lured Scottish boys to its feeding tar-pits. That’s one I will never forget. The same can be said about The Zone of Interest. The movie is nominated for Academy Awards in Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best International Film.