We usually aim to fill these pages with provocative and cutting-edge cinema. But this week we have a film whose subject matter could not be further away from the gruesome, sexual violence of last week’s Antichrist.
Up is an antidote to films like Antichrist. It is aimed at children as well as adults, but although we’re usually first in line for controversy and edginess, we cannot help admitting to looking forward to it – and enjoying it. Up is inoffensive and endearing in a way only a Pixar film can be.
Pixar is aiming to achieve a tenth consecutive critical and commercial feel-good hit, an unbroken chain of success that began with Toy Story in 1995. Up is the studio’s first to feature humans as main characters, yet, like Pixar’s other offerings,, it remains pure escapism. Despite the studio’s mastery of computer-generated imagery, Pixar has shied away from reinventing the wheel and attempting to recreate realistic people. The humans are fantastical and stylised but are at the same time convincing. Imagination triumphs over realism at Pixar Studios.
As Toy Story proved, a film with real dramatic power does not necessarily require realistic human beings. Up is perhaps the most emotive of any Pixar film to date. It deals maturely with themes of isolation, modernity, old age, death, and the failure of dreams. Were it not for a Pixar happy ending, the overall effect could have been rather melancholy.
It opens with balloon salesman Carl’s life is being summarised in montage. Obsessed with the exploits of aviator adventurer Charles Muntz in South America, a young Carl meets a kindred spirit in Ellie. The pair marry and move into the house that as children they used to imagine was Muntz’s exploration craft, the ‘Spirit of Discovery’.
Both dream of following in his footsteps to the fabled Paradise Falls, yet their dream is shattered, literally, many times and Ellie dies before it can be realised. Her death is portrayed tactfully for Up’s young audience, but it is perhaps this subtlety that makes it such a deeply affecting scene.
The pain of failing to fulfill the couple’s shared dream, combined with the pain of Ellie’s death, made Carl into the sour old man we see when the film begins. It takes his court-ordered removal to a retirement home for Carl to make efforts to realise the couple’s dream.
When developers are bearing down on his now lone home, and when they come close to destroying a treasured reminder of his and Ellie’s time together, it is one defeat too far. Carl has little left to live for, and makes his spectacular departure when he and no longer has anything to lose.
In trademark Pixar fashion, with a forest of balloons attached to his house, Carl lifts off for South America, and an inadvertent child stowaway aboard, the over-enthusiastic (and excessively talkative) Russell.
The film continues on a lighter note, with some unforgettable moments. It is hilarious to watch battling geriatrics and a Doberman with a malfunctioning voice synthesizer. The concept of dogs being able to talk is one of the film’s stranger ideas, and after Carl’s departure, the film verges on absurdity several times yet Pixar pull these off in trademark fashion, managing to keep the audience on board.
Up’s second act is somewhat lacking, yet the film’s conclusion is moving and powerful. Carl’s longing for a son, and Russell’s longing for a father figure are simultaneously resolved, but portrayed without resorting to sentimentality.
As with each new Pixar film, the considerable advances in the technology are notable, yet in no way has this led to a dilution of the quality, substance, or, touching hilarity that only Pixar seem to produce. To reach the exceptionally high standard met by Pixar’s previous nine films is quite a feat, but Up completes Pixar’s perfect ten.
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