LITTLE ROCK — We are entering the time of year when moviegoers - or at least movie critics - begin to compile their lists of the year’s best. Usually November and December are the prime months for the release of what Hollywood considers its best shots at Academy Award glory.
But this year may be a strange one. Aside from Lee Daniel’s gritty Precious, there’s little awards buzz surrounding any of the imminent releases, a couple of which - Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island among them - have been pushed back to 2010. The consensus is that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences picked a bad year to expand the number of Best Picture nominees from five to 10.
So it’s a little odd that one of the best films of the year is being released on DVD before most of the presumptive “prestige” pictures have even hit theaters, but that’s the case with the latest Pixar/Disney animated feature, the remarkably soulful Up - an adventure story about an old man who ties balloons to his house and floats away.
For all its cutting edge computer-driven technology, Up is deeply rooted in the humanist values of story and character. While it can pass as light family entertainment, it deals with some remarkably profound ideas and poses serious questions about what constitutes a well-lived life. Up is a well-written, subtle and painstakingly re-alized film that shames most award-seeking dramas.
“We approach our writing exactly as one would approach a live-action screenplay; the focus is on character and keeping the audience engaged,” director Pete Docter says. “Our whole process is remarkably similar to liveaction; we have cinematographers, lighters, costume designers, etc. We use different tools to get there, but the creative process is the same.”
The film’s first act is essentially the lifelong love story between Carl Fredricksen (voice of Ed Asner) and his wife, Ellie, who as children were awed by a Movietone newsreel (presented in magnificently fluttery black and white) about a disgraced explorer named Charles Muntz (voice of Christopher Plummer). Muntz disappeared with his dirigible into Venezuela while looking for mythical Paradise Falls and proof of the existence of an unlikely bird. Carl and Ellie dreamed of following Muntz, but the day-to-day demands of adult existence and mortality thwarted them.
A highlight of the film is a poignant, near-silent montage that explains how Carl morphed from a wide-eyed kid into a lonely old curmudgeon with a deep sentimental attachment to his home - which represents his beloved, deceased wife.
“As we developed the story of this guy floating away in his house, and we asked ourselves, ‘Why is he doing that?’” Docter says. “We figured there was some sort of loss or unfulfilled dream that he was trying to make right, and so we came up with the back story of Carl and his wife. We initially constructed it as a compressed series of small short scenes with dialogue and sound effects. Little snippets of life. Bob [Peterson] wrote it.
“When [story supervisor] Ronnie del Carmen started to storyboard it, we felt like it would be nice to reduce it, simplify it and take the dialogue out. My parents shot a lot of Super 8 movies of our family growing up. Watching them now, there’s something really emotional about not having any sound. That allows, I think, the audience to participate more actively and kind of imagine, ‘What are they talking about there?’ ... and that feeling was all part of what went into that scene ... these really little beautiful real-life moments showing the highs and lows of life. Carl’s true adventure - their relationship together.”
“This love story was the spine of the whole movie,” co-director Peterson adds.“When we develop these films we look for themes that guide us in how we tell the story. As the process of writing progressed, we realized that our main theme was, ‘How does a person define adventure?’ Is adventure out there in great deeds, or can it also be between people in the small moments that make up a life. Carl and Ellie’s love story helped us tell that theme - that small moments lead to a life’s adventure.”
While all his neighbors have sold out to commercial developers, Carl squats amidst the construction sites, an intransigent rebuke to progress - not unlike Clint Eastwood’s character in Gran Torino (or Hal Holbrooke’s in the forthcoming That Evening Sun).
But Carl draws the attention of an overachieving Junior Wilderness Scout named Russell (voice of Jordan Nagai) looking to complete his merit badge collection by aiding the elderly. Carl sends the boy on a fool’s errand. Then, after a harrowing incident with one of the construction workers, Carl decides to float his home Danny Deckchairstyle to Paradise Falls.
Only after he’s aloft does he discover the boy is an inadvertent stowaway; he has no choice but to take him along. Once they arrive in South America - on top of one of the mesa-like mountains called tepuis - a couple of other characters are introduced; an exotic bird that Russell names Kevin and a talking dog (voiced by Peterson) named Dug.
“The reason for Dug being in the film is that we wanted to give Carl a new family after his wife passes on,” Peterson says. “We essentially gave him a family dog, a grandson - and a 12-foot flightless bird. You know, a family! It is up to Carl to accept this new family in the body of the film, thus doing what his wife would have wanted - to move on and forge new relationships. Originally Dug and Kevin were with Carl alone (before Russell was created). Carl had no one to talk with so we invented the talking dog collars.”
Peterson obviously had a deep identification with Dug.
“It was a thrill for me to voice him, mainly because I have been a dog owner and lover for my entire life,” he says. “This dog collar idea let us animate Dug with true dog behaviors. I crafted Dug’s voice around how I talk to my dogs: ‘Hiii you dawgs,’ I’ll say with that Dug-like voice. I also love how my dogs are interested in the simple things in life - balls, treats, squirrels! Dogs to me have a soul - they’re very emotional.”
Dug also serves as a kind of mentor for Carl, Petersonsays.
“Dug’s undying and immediate canine love - ‘I have just met you and I love you’ and ‘I was under your porch because I love you’ - is an indirect lesson for Carl that love is always around him, if he will only accept it.”
Even the putative villain of the piece - the demented Muntz - plays an important part in Carl’s arc.
“Charles Muntz in story terms is Carl Fredricksen at the end of the line,” Peterson says. “In other words, if Carl had made it to Paradise Falls without accepting others into his life, then he would have gone crazy, wallowing in his unfinished quest.” Up is available in several configurations; as a single widescreen DVD ($29.99), in a double disc deluxe edition ($39.99) and a four disc Blu-ray edition ($45.99).
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Style, Pages 27 on 11/10/2009