Thoughts on UP

May 31st, 2009Blog2 comments

UP. I saw it.

I hated it.

Just kidding, I loved it! Some thoughts on the film: SPOILERS FOLLOW.

- The balance between drama and comedy was excellent. The first act of the film quickly established Carl’s story and all of the visual metaphors used throughout the rest of the movie. Whenever the audience needed a laugh, it got one. The grounded, real-world setup about a loved one’s death balanced the whimsy of the flying house — these two ideas established polar points that gave the story a lot of room to roam between.

Another thing that struck me is that we as the audience were the only ones privy to Carl’s backstory. No other characters in the movie ever understood the importance of the house, the mailbox, the quest. We were the only ones who really knew how much those things meant. That’s a powerful device in any kind of storytelling — making the audience into the only confidants to a person’s secrets.

- The visual metaphors were great. Carl and Elie’s chairs — so different individually, yet pairing together so well. Plus when Carl is sitting alone in his chair you sense Elie’s absence. The movie kept revisiting that metaphor and others, telling a story about the progression of the characters: Together, then just one, then the chairs left by themselves, empty and not needed anymore. Remnants in the past. Pixar is very good at visual storytelling.

The character design was really great too. The silhouettes — Carl being angular, blocky. Russell: Spherical, soft. The juxtaposition of the designs and the way they moved conveyed a lot about their character and emotion. Pixar is incredible at finding ways of moving the animation art form forward.

- What struck me too is how clear the difference is between storytelling and commodity entertainment. True storytelling is constantly searching to tell us something new about the human experience. It makes us think, learn, grow.

Commodity entertainment’s goal is to temporarily keep the viewer’s brain busy with explosions, regurgitated pop culture references, etc.. There’s nothing wrong with that, and both things have value and the right to make money. Both have a place in our society.

But true storytelling will always be rarer because it’s much harder to do. It exponentially requires much more practice, thought and refinement because of its nature — it does something new. And that’s really tricky.

But when you see great storytelling happen as it does in UP — man does it make the dreck that’s out there look even dreckier by comparison.