Pixar makes films that capture one of the primary reasons I love going to a theater, sitting in the dark, and staring at a screen for a couple of hours. I love all sorts of films, including those gritty and realistic stories that speak directly about our daily lives. Pixar’s films, on the other hand, are wonderful escapism and enjoyment. Like all good art, no matter how fantastical the subject matter may be, the Pixar movies do show us something about ourselves, they help us see the world differently. I go into a Pixar movie expecting great things and to this point, I have not been disappointed. Some films soar higher than others, but even at their “lower” moments, the movies Pixar produces are better than most other films released. With their ability to craft wonderful stories and worlds inhabited by memorable characters while pushing the technological envelope, I can say that with each Pixar movie, I have always seen something I had never seen before.
The streak continues with Up, which is not one of Pixar’s lower moments. The film is Pete Doctor’s second directorial project for Pixar. (His first was Monsters Inc., which somehow gets overshadowed by the other Pixar films.) It is hard to write a review about this film because I want to give nothing away. It is best experienced with as little knowledge as possible so that the viewer can ensure maximum surprise. Briefly sketched, the film follows Carl Fredrickson (Ed Asner), a seventy-something curmudgeon who sees the wonderful life he had lived for several years taken from him in a series of setbacks. Doctor and his screenwriting partner and co-director Bob Peterson set up the movie with deftness and aching beauty in just five minutes. The opening sequence of Up is one of the most moving film beginnings I have ever seen. It is not hard to get me to cry at a film, but I cannot remember the last time I cried within five minutes of a movie starting.
The life Carl created and dreamed of has slowly eroded underneath him. Change that he never wanted has come to him and the last vestige of that life he loved — his house — is threatened by urban expansion. Enter Russell (Jordan Nagai), a Wilderness Explorer who has every merit badge but one, who shows up on Carl’s doorstep in order to assist an elderly person and earn that final badge. Carl rebuffs Russell’s attempts to help with a tried and true scouting trick for which Russell easily falls, which makes us wonder about the depth of Russell’s experience. Carl decides to escape the encroaching restrictions on his freedom by tying thousands of helium-filled balloons to his house and fly the building to Paradise Falls in Venezuela. (I figure this information is in the trailer, so it is not that much of a spoiler.) Russell unintentionally finds himself on the floating house and joins Carl to South America. I will leave the discussion of the plot points alone there. If the idea of a 78-year-old man and an 8-year-old boy taking a floating house on an adventure to the jungles of South America does not sound interesting to you, further elaboration on the story’s events will not help.
Up is a film that handles life’s hardships authentically and gracefully. Carl’s and Russel’s disappointments in life are real to their situations and shape who they are without the movie ever becoming about those disappointments. Rather, their losses frame their actions and growth. Doctor does not fall into the lie that we have to protect children — or adults, for that matter — from danger and trouble in stories. The great stories for any age always have an element of danger, whether physical or psychological. Up knows that even for a movie where much of the action takes place on a floating house, we must connect with the characters if we are to ever lose ourselves in the story. If its audience must deal with the realities of death and divorce, why should the movie avoid those topics? Up offers escapism through imaginative settings and adventure, not through acting as if the pains of our world do not exist.
A final couple of notes on the film. Kudos to Pixar for not only making Russell an Asian-American kid, but also casting an Asian-American kid to supply the voice. Carey and I saw Up in the traditional 2-D projection. I’d love to see it in 3-D.
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