A Could Have Been Animation Masterpiece

Up

Pete Docter

USA

2009

The 10^th another eye-candy and chicken soup-soul production of PIXAR animations distributed by Walt Disney has kept up to its reputation of being more than a scrumptious visual feast for the children, the young at heart, and for the whole family. “Up” soars way and beyond the sweetest imaginations and talents in this contemporary animation era which I shall call the PIXAR Era. As opposed to the dark and political animations from France, Japan, and even Palestine, American popular animation has for me successfully accomplished the intermediate step of bringing up commercial animations to the pedestal of great films. Entering the more social and bravely the controversial sphere is the subsequent plinth PIXAR could opt though for them not to do it is definitely not a disappointment and could even be one if they do so. The world obviously loves, adores, and more importantly consumes the way they do over the past decade beginning with the lovely “Toy Story” in 1995 to my favourite “Finding Nemo” in 2003 all the way to this Academy Award Best Picture nominee.

A charming entertainment is expected for an old man bringing his house to a mythical Paradise Lost through a hundred thousand balloons together with a chubby and cute grade school boy scout who is a reminiscent of him when he was young.  The film is composed of three parts—the background of the objective, the quest to achieve the objective, and the adjusted objective. Adventure films usually put in most of its strongest elements in the middle part which is the quest. You can take as an example “The Lord of the Rings” and even “Harry Potter”, where the quest for the objective is like 90% of the whole film. In “Up”, the nucleus is its strongest link. Most of the time, adventure films let the quest-part usurp the power of the entire film. “Journey to the Centre of the Earth” perhaps is an example when the journey is triggered by an advanced academic interest by a Geology professor and his nephew’s stride to follow and investigate why his father never came back in the travel to the centre of the earth. The motivation sounds exploratory and sincere but the treatment to the potent of this spur has been taken too negligibly as if the reason looks more of an excuse rather than a real reason. The 180 degree of this narrative flaw is nothing less than “Up”.  

The first part of the film is overflowing with warmth that I have ever witnessed. The childish dreams all of us used to have are simply awakened by the young Carl Fredricksen’s dream of being an explorer to the Paradise Lost and also by his soon-to-be-wife playmate’s imagining of an old house into a flying craft. After a couple of sweet boy-girl playtime on this old house, the two soon grow up, get married, and purchase the old house they used to play at. There are scenes suggesting Carl’s wife’s inability to bear child and those so lovely. There is also a montage where the couple keep s a jar coin-bank with a label reading Paradise Lost, but incidences like tires exploding and trees hitting their roof cause them to break that jar coin-bank and use the coins for something else instead. Until they grow old with their childhood dream of going to the Paradise Lost growing as silver as their hair. Carl finally remembers that romantic adventure to their youthful dream and on an attempt to surprising his wife with a plane ticket to Venezuela, she dies. This is not more than half 40 minutes of the total running time of the film but this part for me is eternal. The visuals are oh so God beautiful. The sophisticated mixture of mushy red, childish yellow and sentimental orange-gold provides the most and best eye-popping pictures I’ve ever seen for an animation. This manipulation of beauty through light, colours, positions, and astounding musical score is completely way beyond my imagination. It is heavenly full of heart and passion, an absolute work of geniuses who deeply adores two simple yet inexplicable human life mystiques—art and love.

With its eye-warming, heart-warming, and soul-warming first part of the film, the hardest thing to do now is not to let the first half eat the rest of the film, which it became short a little. The quest part is not that lovely at least for me. Aside from the fact that it has applied a regular-looking cinematography, the adventures itself is not excellent. To be perfectly honest, I wish the film ends at the part where Mr. Fredricksen’s house flies up and away above the city up until the clouds. I don’t mind seeing it as a short animated feature but for sure PIXAR, Walt Disney and most of the commercial pop-culture consumers would mind. I just wish it could have ended that way, and it would become my favourite short film ever or one of best movies I have seen ever, if not the best. But due to its commercial market and value, that part to where I want to end it is just the beginning of what the public consumers would really consume—the adventure part. 

 

Bringing eternity back in the discussion, I could have felt more eternity for the love of Carl to his wife if it ends that way. The ending could have been heartbreaking, nostalgic, fantastic, and childish. A flying house made possible by a hundred thousand of colourful balloons is the sweetest accolade I could ever employ for my childhood and may also for yours. I love seeing the house soar up high with these helium-filled elastics for this parallels love. That image also is one of the strongest and sweetest imagery I have ever witnessed not just in the history of animation but even in art in general. Mr. Fredrickson is old, he lost his wife even before they could have made their most treasured childhood dream of travelling and exploring Paradise Lost. His wife dreams of building a house beside the top of the falls in Paradise Lost. Their house alone though is endangered of being bought by a multi-million corporate company and even the old man’s stay at their house is at stake after a community incident which made the local government order him to stay at some elderly village. I like to say I know how he feels because it makes me feel alive and more human. On the day that he is supposed to be fetched by the elderly village attendants while as the construction foreman and his boss eyeing for the lot of his house show up with sly faces, the old man launches the balloon out of the chimney, the edges of the house break off against the ground, and with a loud thud of happiness and tone of winning against these people way down of his window, Mr. Fredrickson sets his and his wife’s house into where they really want it to be built. This imagery blows me away, at the same time pierces my heart. We all have childhood-buried dreams and fantasies, and most of them are too fantastic we can literally only take them as a dream. We grow old and our childhood dreams become less and less stellar and brilliant. We wake up one day and we realize how much we want to fulfil a dream that now seems to be extremely distant, and too impossible. I find the film beautifully heartrending because it is a realization that these dreams don’t have a room of achievement in the real world, and that we need a medium to where it may come true—and films provide that, “Up” is a proof. 

 

While I love to dwell on that could-have-been aspect of the film, I would like to talk a bit about the end of the film. I call it an adjusted achievement, Mr. Fredricksen’s goal is to move the house to the Paradise Lost but he ends up doing another adventure and achieving another goal. The part where he sees a note from his wife saying that it is time for him to have a new adventure is another sweet element in the film. This enunciates another endlessly seeming beacon to the old man’s life, with a kid friend, and a yellow retriever, Mr. Fredrickson finds a new dream he never really dreamt of.

I will say that “Finding Nemo” still happens to be my favourite animated film because it is consistently great from the very first 5 minutes until the last second of the movie, and because its background of the quest is heartbreaking, its quest is incredible, and the ending is inspiring. As opposed to “Up” which I totally commend the first part/background of the quest, its quest and ending is good but overshadowed by the first part. Generally I find this blockbuster animation a touching one.