Italian director Matteo Garrone is a reliable crusher of aspirations. In his 2008 break-through drama Gomorrah, two fresh-faced Neapolitan youngsters aspire to emulate the mobsters they’ve seen portrayed in gangster movies: they end up being shot by a bunch of pot-bellied mafia grandpas, and carted off by a digger.
Garrone’s 2019 retelling of Pinocchio had the titular wooden boy headed for a mythical Land of Toys – only to be transformed into a donkey, crippled in a circus show, and thrown into the sea. Wide-eyed boys who dare to dream ending up as landfill is such a persistent theme in
