Up

There is such a dearth of good movies coming to Singapore for the last few years that I can just go to the cinema and watch any movie that’s worth watching. I think that Singapore movie audiences largely deserve to watch the dreck served up by distributors because that’s basically what they want, the same old safe dross that’s been proven to put butts on seats, the blockbuster that was invented in the 1970s.

Recently, there have been a few good movies, but I suppose this is summer season. So it was a surprise that here is a stretch of 4 movies that I want to watch: “Harry Potter”, “Hangover”, “Up” and “Bruno”.

This morning I had taken leave to drive my grandmother’s private ambulance. However since her appointment was rescheduled (and my father taking over tomorrow) I decided to go back to work. But on my way to work, I bumped into a colleague on the bus, and after taking the bus for a little while, suddenly decided that I was going to take leave anyway. Most of the time I’m on leave, it’s a drag to get myself out of the house, and since I’m already in the city, why not use it, right? So after having a long a leisurely breakfast, I was in the cinema, watching “Up” and wearing a pair of 3D glasses.

By some coincidence, Nat had his folks in town this morning, and he had also taken leave in the morning, and had watched “Up” at approximately the same time I was watching it, but in a different mall. Then again, is it really possible to distinguish any 2 given Capitaland malls from each other? Thought not.

What more can I say about the first 5 minutes of the film, except that just about every movie review of “Up” I’ve read (around 10) have said that it was great, high point of the film, blah blah blah. It is the emotional core of the film. You know why Carl Fredrikson wants to make this trip, and it’s very clear.

This film is a lot like “Gran Torino” in a sense. Old white men and young Asian kid. Old white man is a widower, and consequently embittered, in spite of, by most accounts, having lived a long and good life, and had the sort of wonderful, perfect 30/40 year marriage that people just don’t seem to have anymore. There is something tragic in that, no doubt, that you can live the sort of life that many people only dream about having, and at the end of the day, you are still a miserable old sod.

Some people have wondered, why are Asians always the kids in these movies. I don’t know, my guess is that it’s some kind of homage to Miyazaki because his main characters are usually kids. I suppose Westerners don’t really know us Asians very well, not as well as they do Jews or Blacks. The image of Asia is that of a kid, because we know that our time has come, and only come lately. A blank sheet, then, because they don’t know better. Asians because us Asians know how to be kids. The westerners are just too smart alecky, especially in movies, and clever rather than wise. The story was calling for a kid to be a kid. A scout who helps old men cross the road.

Some people have criticized the movie for not having a lot of ideas. I’d admit that if I were the screenwriter the first part of the movie would be much easier than the rest of the movie to write. What can you do with a floating house / caravan anyway? The thing about animated films is that you usually put quite some effort into inventing the funny characters. Then after that, instead of looking for a proper plot, maybe it’s easier to just make it a road movie.

The road movie has been around in literature forever. Three of the most famous works in their respective cultures are road movies: “The Odyssey” (woohoo!), “Wizard of Oz” and “Journey to the West”. As with “Journey to the West”, the basic plot is familiar: put together a bunch of people who are driving each other up the wall: a tricky monkey and an anal retentive monk. Watch the sparks fly.

Quite a few Pixar films are road movies. Finding Nemo, Cars and the Incredibles are road movies. Shrek, the one truly impressive Dreamworks feature, is also a road movie. Hangover, which I watched last week, is a sorda road movie, even though it is also a treasure hunt.

Pixar movies are usually notable for having a lot of nice clever touches, like the dogs with their talking collars. I like how the alpha dog has a squeaky voice. Pixar are largely made up of engineers, and more than a few of them are quite contemptuous of authority: this shows up in their pictures. I liked the scenes that make fun of Carl Fredrikson being an old fart. It was quite funny to see the two old men attempt to fight each other, and throw out their backs in the process.

Some people have commended Pixar for being brave with their plots. Surprisingly, some people feel that having people of different generations together is brave. To me, it is not. The Incredibles is about a family. Finding Nemo is about a father and son. It is unusual, though, to have an old man sitting on a porch. But not that unusual, because Gran Torino did it, probably independently of “Up” – “Gran Torino” was started after “Up” and released before “Up” – Pixar films have very long pipelines. Relationships between people of different generations are a little unusual in animated features, but in Asian cinema – no. Lee Ang’s first 3 films are about dealing with that difficult father. Ozu made many films about dealing with old parents. Old people are constantly in your lives. I suppose this is another reason why the Boy Scout is Asian – it’s a little difficult to believe westerners behaving so respectfully towards their elders. We know that John Hughes died last week, and he specialized in making films about generation gaps.

But “Up” is not really about relationships between generations. It’s about 2 views of the world clashing. The boy scout is really a boy, not a teenager learning how to be an adult. He basically has 3 roles in the show: to make sure that Carl Fredrickson is not alone and to assist him, and to persuade him to rescue the funny bird.

The plot is not so water tight. Carl Fredrickson is not really an old man physically, because he’s surprisingly fit. He is old spiritually. But that can change. The funny thing is this: the journey started out being some kind of a spiritual journey, a dedication to his wife. How did it end up being a conventional good vs evil action movie towards the end? The wife was the emotional centre of those very excellent 5 minutes. Why did she disappear for the rest of the movie? Yes, there is pathos is finding that the hero that you worshipped in your youth turned out to be some kind of a villain. But beyond that, the connection to the life he shared with the wife is lost.

I suppose it is the prerogative of road movie to have a loose plot, that is the whole point, that you tie up disparate threads together with nothing much binding them other than the fact that they all belong to the same journey.

One question that’s constantly being asked is: when is Pixar going to screw up? There have been 10 feature films so far, and they’ve all ranged from the excellent to the merely good. But some day, they will falter. And when? In the early 90s, it seemed as though Disney were on a great roll. They had the “Mermaid”, then “Beauty and the Beast”, “Aladdin” and the “Lion King”. Then came “Mulan”, which was brave for attempting a Chinese story. Then came “Hercules” and “Tarzan” which was downhill for them.

Thing about Pixar is that you can find out what’s in the pipeline, and it looks a little worrying. Next 2 years will see 2 sequels – Toy Story 3 and Cars 2. Then a typical Pixar film where you have 2 Newts who have to mate because they are the last surviving of the species – and they can’t stand each other. And after that, Pixar are going to change direction and go into fairy tales because they’re now part of Disney. I hope they negotiate this change in direction well.

Thus far, many Pixar films have had very interesting setups. A bunch of toys coming to life and having plenty of wacky adventures. Scary monsters working for a large corporation. A middle life superhero making a comeback. A fish looking for his son. A rat making a career as a cook. There is a lesson in storytelling here. Whereas characters can be as weird and wonderful as they come, the stories and situations that people recognise arise because from everyday, mundane experiences. The Pixar formula, if there is one, is to put all these weirdos through stuff that many ordinary human beings have to go through, and see what happens. But you can run out of ideas.

I was reading some film criticism as commenting that Spielberg and Star Wars were massively influential movies that forever changed movies for the worse. Movies used to be about adults going through life experiences, and suddenly they were all about childlike. This change in artistic direction coincided with the invention and popularization of arcade games. Suddenly what used to be a movie is now a collection of set pieces.

I credit Pixar with injecting a dose of adulthood into movies of this genre, even though all its pictures inevitably fall into this category. In a way there is no choice: if you’re going to make movies with such a large expense, you have to make it commercial.