During a conversation Friday night (January 6) at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, Oscar-winning filmmakers Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water), Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity), and Alejandro González Iñárritu (The Revenant) talked about a range of topics – from death to monsters to their friendship with one another.
Del Toro and Iñárritu were in attendance to speak about their 2022 Netflix films – Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio and Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths. Cuarón served as the moderator.
During the conversation, the subject of religion also came up. Del Toro, who described himself as a “lapsed Catholic,” explained how the imagery of Catholicism worked its way into his latest animated film. “Pinocchio is like Jesus,” del Toro said, according to IndieWire. “He’s like Christ, he’s made of wood, he has nails, resurrects three times to save those that he loves. I think it’s a mythology that is built into my bones.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, de Toro also mentioned Christ when talking about his fascination with monsters. “I completely identify [with] them,” he said. “I saw Frankenstein. I said, ‘That’s my Jesus right there; that’s what I believe in, that’s my saint.’”
The conversation also included Cuarón and Iñárritu joking with del Toro about how he always threatens that he is going to stop making movies.
“You say that all the time: ‘I’m going to do only one more and that’s it,’ and suddenly you’re prepping another one,” Cuarón said. Iñárritu added, “Guillermo always says that this is the last, and today he was telling me about three projects.”
Here’s hoping Guillermo del Toro gets to work on these projects, and hopefully his own Frankenstein, as 2023 gets underway.