Up

This is a delightful film, another triumph for Pixar, but probably its darkest one yet. I can't say enough about the stunning visuals, or the vocal acting, especially by Christopher Plummer as the villain, Charles Muntz, a charming but truly malevolent character. Several people have pointed out to me that the figure of Carl, the hero, looks like a puppet version of Spencer Tracy in his final movie role, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? And it's true--the flat head, short white hair, the oversized black glasses, it's all there. What an obscure and brilliant allusion! Those people at Pixar know their stuff.



UP

Much of Up, the new animated film from Pixar and Disney, is a real downer. Consider these subjects for a “children’s” movie: aging, death, care of the elderly, the loss of parental love, the death of youthful ideals. Ouch. But Up is ultimately what its title claims it to be: an uplifting film that carries one away from all those cares and woes. How it does that just might make the movie more rewarding for viewers in middle life and beyond than for the kids who would seem at first glance to be its audience. But that’s why you can never completely trust the way films are marketed, and why surprise is still such an important part of the movie-going experience.

The opening scenes of the film chronicle the life of Carl Fredricksen (voiced as an adult by the wonderful Ed Asner), from his Depression-era childhood to the present day. A shy, lonely boy who spends his afternoons at the movies, Carl’s world is turned upside down when he meets Ellie, a hyperactive young girl who shares his hero worship of world-renowned explorer and adventurer Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer at his suavest) and has started a club in his honor in an old, abandoned house. Carl becomes the club’s second--and only other--member, and a touching montage traces his relationship with Ellie as it moves from friendship into courtship, marriage, and their life growing old together in the clubhouse that's become their home. The couple, unable to have children, are devoted to each other, as well as to the memory of Muntz, who disappeared years earlier while piloting his dirigible over a remote region in South America called Paradise Falls. They put money aside to one day make the trip to Paradise Falls themselves, but one emergency after another drains their savings and the trip never materializes. On her deathbed, Ellie makes Carl promise that he will still try, but her death leaves him lonely and heartbroken, and there seems little chance of his keeping that promise.

So what is this movie up to? So far it does not seem calculated to entertain anyone who can’t already vote. And for awhile things only get worse. In addition to grief and loneliness, Carl must contend with urban renewal, which surrounds his tiny home with modern building developments. He stubbornly refuses to sell his property and leave, but one day he clashes with a construction worker and hits him with his cane. Ordered by the court to be placed in a retirement home, Carl’s life seems at its lowest point—until he comes up with a brilliant solution. During the night, he inflates thousands of balloons with helium and attaches them to his house. The next morning, just as the medical attendants are coming to collect him, he releases the balloons and they pull his house from its foundations and carry it up, up and away, his destination the long-desired Paradise Falls.

The film undergoes an extreme makeover at this point. The fantastic was hinted at earlier in old newsreel footage of a young, reckless Charles Muntz, but now Up literally becomes a flight of fancy. The picturization of the house soaring above and through clouds is simply amazing, real enough to send acrophobes under their seats. In a nod to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Paradise Falls turns out to be a kind of Lost World inhabited by strange creatures, most notably a prehistoric bird that resembles a cross between a giant dodo and a toucan. And then there are those talking dogs….

But despite the outlandish elements, Up never completely loses touch with solid ground. Carl’s emotional connection to Ellie only deepens the closer he gets to their life’s goal, and his journey is complicated by an interesting stowaway: an 8-year-old Wilderness Explorer (i.e. Boy Scout) named Russell (Jordan Nagai), who was on Carl’s porch about to ring the doorbell when he got the surprise of his life. Russell understands nothing of the more serious implications of this flight from reality--he’s simply thrilled by the Boy’s Adventure aspect of it, and is eager to become a crew member of the unusual flight craft. But Russell has a story of his own, which comes out slowly as the film unfolds: only child, divorced parents, a father whose business travels keep him away from home so much he has little time for his son. Russell’s loneliness clearly echoes Carl’s, and though the curmudgeonly senior is initially resistant to Russell’s presence, he softens over time as the two share the hardships of the journey, eventually bonding with the boy over their mutual need for friendship.

As its name suggests, Paradise Falls, once found, is a source of disillusionment. There, Carl and Russell find the aged, but surprisingly spry, Charles Muntz living in splendid exile, like Robinson Crusoe on Charles Foster Kane’s income. The most charismatic and complex character in the film, Muntz dominates the movie’s third act. In person he's something very different from the romantic hero of Carl’s memory. Isolation, and the totalitarian authority he exercises over his corps of trained watchdogs (hilariously fitted with devices that translate their barks into human speech) has turned the idealistic explorer into a shadowy, menacing figure, something along the lines of the renegade Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (their names are even similar). Muntz’s purpose for living in seclusion, allowing the world to think he’s dead, is a dark one: he wants to hunt down a prehistoric bird so that he can prove its existence to a scientific community that doubted and humiliated him years before. Crazed to the point of megalomania, he dispatches anyone who stands in his way—which now includes Carl and Russell, who have found the bird in the jungle and grown attached to it.

Conrad, Paradise lost, megalomania—this is a children’s film, right? The colorful giant bird (which Russell names “Kevin,” before he discovers it’s a mother) and the talking dogs do provide many lighter, kid-friendly moments. Dug, a misfit among Muntz's stormpoochers--he eventually switches sides to help Carl and Russell--is especially funny, the kind of comic relief the film needs to give it ballast (he's voiced by co-writer/director Bob Peterson). But Paradise Falls is a gloomy place overall, befitting the film’s melancholy understanding of aging and the abandonment of dreams. Tots won’t get it, of course, but their parents and grandparents will—which makes the exciting climax much more meaningful than the usual Hollywood action finale. Muntz finally succeeds in capturing Kevin, so Russell dashes off to save him, and Carl—after some initial reluctance and a moving farewell to the life he spent with Ellie—chases after him to fulfill his hero’s destiny. And to begin his life anew.

He pilots the house to intercept Muntz’s dirigible, where both Kevin and Russell are imprisoned; when Muntz catches him on board, the two antiquated warriors face off with “swords” for a classic swashbuckling denouement. If Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone had reunited onscreen in their 80s, their final duel might have looked like this. The sequence is one of the film’s real treats, heightened by the superb vocal work of Asner and Plummer. But after the movie heroics are over--and Russell and Kevin rescued--this Paradise False must be left behind. The story returns home, to its beginnings, where real heroism is displayed in ordinary daily life--accepting reality, shouldering responsibility, engaging with the world. Carl and Russell--friends and fellow adventurers--are now each other’s family as well.

Is the middle section of the movie in actuality a dream? It could be--it functions like one, helping Carl work through his problems (making peace with his disappointments, accepting his losses) and move on with his life. This should sound familiar. When it comes to fantasy adventure films purportedly made for younger audiences, is The Wizard of Oz ever very far away? With regard to Up, it’s no farther than its own front yard. Let’s see, a troubled protagonist running away from his problems escapes to a fantastic world--in a flying house, no less--where he’s helped by unlikely companions to defeat a mysterious oppressor, who is something of a wizard (inventor, flyer) but with the murderous impulses of a wicked witch. Renewed by his victory, he returns home, having gained both a greater appreciation of his life there and a better understanding of how to live it well.

The sudden, sharp changes in the film’s direction and visual style also suggest that something extraordinary is happening in these middle scenes. Carl and Ellie’s sweet, real-life story is displayed in mostly muted tones and two-dimensional compositions within the enclosed spaces of their house. Up’s switch to the fantasy-adventure genre introduces eye-popping visuals and the three-dimensional depth of the world at large, especially the vertigo-inducing shots from the air. The film concludes with a series of photographs of Carl and Russell hanging out back home, enjoying their new friendship--happy images but completely flat ones, emphasizing the return to the two-dimensional space of the beginning.

Carl’s journey to Paradise Falls could therefore be another version of Dorothy’s dream. The lines between reality and fantasy having been blurred by the narrative’s liberties, there is no confirming what actually takes place or doesn’t. Up doesn’t directly make this claim, but it plays with the kind of ambiguity and surreal logic that admits of the possibility. And isn’t that the possibility underlying all fairy tales, in a way? Once Up-on a time, there was a little old man living by himself in a funny-looking house…