Up
Directed by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson. Written by Bob Peterson. With Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai, Bob Peterson, Delroy Lindo, and John Ratzenberger. (PG)
Arrive early for Up, the new animated film from the men behind a string of hits for the Pixar studio—Wall-E, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, and more—and you'll be treated to the standard barrage of come-ons, teasers and advertisements that threatens to last longer than the feature you came to see. Somewhere between the call to drink Coke and the preview for the latest stuck-in-the-past Disney feature—this one featuring a voodoo and minstrel vision of old New Orleans—you may start to wonder why you bother going to the theater at all anymore.
And then Up begins, and from the first frame, it's a reminder of everything that's great about the movies—their sense of magic, the thrill of discovery, and above all the larger than life stories that draw you into another world, stories that leave you feeling enriched when you walk out into the sun a couple of hours later. (Appropriately, that first scene takes place in a theater, where a young would-be explorer sits in awe of his onscreen hero.) It's what Disney—which used its awesome stockpile of cash to buy Pixar—used to do before it turned its films into pop-vocal soundtracks with drawings.
The story's unlikely hero is Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner), a 78-year-old balloon salesman whom we first meet as that boy at the movies. On his way home, he meets Ellie, a gap-toothed girl who shares his explorer's wanderlust. We see them grow up and grow old together in the film's master stroke, a wordless sequence that charts the joys and sadness of a full life. The sequence is a technical marvel, but an emotional one as well, notable for its willingness to introduce heartache into what most people will inevitably see as a kid's movie.
It's that sense of sadness that makes the rest of it so very enjoyable. Adrift without his Ellie, Carl tethers thousands of balloons to his home, literally tearing it away from its foundation. Once up in the air, he steers toward the South American paradise the pair always longed to visit.
Joining him is stowaway Russell, an eight-year-old "Wilderness Explorer" trying to earn his badge for Assisting the Elderly. Together, the curmudgeon and the cub make their way south, where Carl will have an unexpected encounter with his childhood hero Charles Muntz, a Howard Hughes figure, quite mad, on the hunt for a rare bird in the South American jungle. His only companions are the dozens of hunting dogs he's outfitted with special collars that allow them to talk.
Asner is wonderful as the cantankerous Carl, as is Christopher Plummer as Muntz; the veteran actors refuse to play their parts with any hint of age-related weariness, even if a fight scene is interrupted by back spasms. And is it even necessary to mention anymore that Pixar's animation is simply some of the best out there? While so many cost-cutting cartoons end up with a flat look—where a character's hair has the same texture as a countertop—the Pixar artists happily spend time on the details. Yet for all the action and artistic wizardry on display, Up remains at its heart a story about one man's love for his wife, his loneliness without her, and his surprise at finding a way to keep on going. And in the end, that is what you'll remember, long after the ditties of flashier films have died away.
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Also this week: Jim Jarmusch, director of Broken Flowers and Down by Law, returns to arthouse screens this week with The Limits of Control. Set in the cinematically rich landscapes of urban and rural Spain (and lovingly photographed by cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who created the lush look of Wong Kar Wai's masterpiece In The Mood for Love), it tells the story of an enigmatic loner, Jarmusch stalwart Isaac De Bankole—the screenplay doesn't bother to give him a name—in the process of completing a job. Exactly what that job entails we aren't told.
Jarmusch has always enjoyed withholding details, and here he keeps the level of mystery unnaturally high. De Bankole's stranger enters a series of cafes, always ordering "two espressos in two separate cups." Strangers approach and exchange matchboxes with him; one contains gems, the other a piece of paper that De Bankole studies and then eats. Along the way, a cavalcade of stars wanders through, including Tilda Swinton, Gael Garc?a Bernal, John Hurt and Bill Murray, who seems to be making a second career out of semi-serious roles in small films. The film opens Friday at Pleasant Street Theater in Northampton; a full review will appear here next week.
Also screening at Pleasant Street is Outrage, the latest from Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker Kirby Dick (This Film Is Not Yet Rated). Almost certain to cause an uproar in conservative and liberal circles alike—though likely for different reasons—the film is an indictment of the nation's closeted politicians who continue to legislate against the gay and lesbian communities they themselves secretly belong to. As it uncovers "the hidden lives of some of the United States' most powerful policymakers," Dick's film examines not only the ethics of outing closeted public figures, but also the media's role both in keeping the truth under wraps and, once it's revealed, in exploiting it through its lopsided coverage of the sex lives of gay politicians. Providing analysis derived from personal experience are some high-profile names in the gay community, including Congressman Barney Frank, former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey and openly gay Wisconsin congresswoman Tammy Baldwin.
As fate would have it, another film screening in Northampton provides a complement to Outrage. No Secret Anymore, which shows at 7 p.m. on Friday at the Media Education Foundation, is the story of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon and their half-century of leadership in the ongoing struggle for lesbian civil rights. Widely recognized as the founding figures of a movement, they made history in 2004 when they became the first same-sex couple to be officially married in San Francisco. The story of their life together is a kind of modern history of the lesbian community in microcosm, charting the dramatic changes that have marked the last 50 years, from a fear of discovery to an open call for equality. The free screening, presented by the Northampton Committee to Stop the War in Iraq, is in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riot, and a discussion will follow the film.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
