Nathaniel

Shockey

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June 10, 2009

Pixar’s UP: A Beacon of Hope and Reason

Why can’t there be more movies like Pixar’s most recent film, UP?

The story was so unbelievably fresh and well told that even I was at a loss for words when the movie ended. The first 10 minutes provided the backdrop for our hero, the curmudgeonly, crotchety Carl. But this movie wasn’t about why he was old and grumpy, it was about the way he learned to look at it. I’ll get back to that later.

The music was also remarkably good. It was melodramatic, not understated, maybe even overstated, in a way that fit the style of the movie. When everything was going crazy, the music followed along, sweeping me up in the frenzy and panic of the moment. When things were somber, reflective, when Carl was looking at a picture, there was the simple melody on the piano that reminded me of the music from As Good As It Gets. And during one of the most poignant moments of the movie, when Carl finally arrived where he thought he wanted to be, there was no music. Only the deafening silence of loneliness.

People acted like people and animals like animals (for the most part). The dogs had simple, stupid, honest thoughts – exaggerations of what grown-ups would imagine, not what children do. Russell, the chubby little kid, was oblivious, honest and, as we eventually realized, deeply wounded by his father’s absence. Carl did not act in the way most elderly people act in movies, or if I may be so judgmental, in most of our minds. When the men showed up to take him away to a nursing home, which the storytellers helped us visualize by showing us a brochure whose cover featured two old, married, smiling people, one of them cracked that he was probably taking his 85^th pee of the day. That’s when the balloons came out the chimney of his house and he flew away.

Yes, he was old, and his back repeatedly gave out on him. He had dentures, and walked with a cane that had four tennis balls on the bottom. He was grumpy and wary of new and younger society. He wouldn’t sell his old house for any amount of money. But he was more than that, and evidently quite capable of learning new tricks.

Of the many, many lessons of this movie, which is perhaps even wiser than Pixar’s Ratatouille, The Incredibles or Toy Story, the one Carl learned was that he was living his true fantasy the whole time he was chasing the one he had promised to his future wife when they first met as toddlers.

Among the themes in this movie are:

• An inability to have children
• Digging into savings in order to pay for unexpected expensive life events
• Legal action that drives a man from his home
• Loss of a spouse

And this movie was for kids?

Yes and no. Some of these would be difficult for a child to understand. But that doesn’t mean they can’t understand, or that these events don’t belong in a “kids” movie. I would say they belong more than the majority of the unrealistic and sometimes flat-out untrue ideas in most of the kids’ movies I’ve ever seen. (And for what it’s worth, the children in the theater were laughing almost as much as I was.) But even more importantly, this really isn’t a kids’ movie. It’s a movie I urge everyone to see.

So why don’t more movies like this exist? I guess you can say that there is only one Brad Bird, or John Lasseter, or Pete Docter. But how does Pixar have such an uncanny knack for finding them? Or maybe they just find Pixar. I don’t know.

What I do know is that, as a fan of movies, I get sick and tired of the same old garbage that pours out of Hollywood week after week after week. And year after year, Pixar reminds me that there is at least one beacon of hope left for truth and reason in the world of films.

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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