It says
something about the depth of the new Pixar animated feature Inside Out, that when I sat down to
write this review the first thing that came to my mind as a way to start was
with a quote from Descartes’ Second
Meditation. But since that’s a terribly ponderous way to begin a review of
a movie that was so much fun, let me instead start with a comment about color.
Pixar has
painted some beautiful pictures for us over the years. I believe that the outer
space dance between Wall-E and Eva in Wall-E
may rank towards the top of the list of the most moving sights I’ve seen on the
screen, all the artistic power of Fantasia
combined with the narrative heft of a love story that is more human than many
involving actual humans (Wall-E eats The Notebook and The Fault in Our Stars for lunch, and uses the picked over bones of
Twilight to clean its teeth
afterwards). I think that the initial montage in Up, following the lives of Carl and Ellie from childhood through to
bereavement is one of the great silent films ever made, a story told only in
pictures. I hold close to my heart the opinion that Woody, Buzz, and the rest
of the toys holding hands as they slide towards the incinerator at the end of Toy Story 3 is gorgeously terrifying.
And yet, I can’t remember ever seeing something like Inside Out’s use of color. Color is everywhere, bright color,
vibrant color, so vivid and articulated that the characters themselves are
built upwards from the foundation of their coloring (yellow for Joy, blue for
Sadness, purple for Fear, red for Anger, and green for Disgust). There is no
moment when looking at Inside Out is
anything but a pleasure.
The story
itself has already garnered plaudits for its breathtaking trip through the mind
of Riley Anderson, an 11 year old girl whose family moves to San Francisco from
Minnesota. We watch, from inside the headquarters of her own mind as she
attempts to process this transition (which is, short of losing a parent,
probably the largest that a child of her age can undergo). At this point I can
do very little besides adding my own voice to the chorus of praise. During the
process of the move, Joy and Sadness (voiced by Amy Pohler and Phyllis Smith
respectively) are launched out of the headquarters of Riley’s mind in what can
only be described as a workplace accident. Without them, Anger, Fear, and
Disgust are left in charge of Riley’s mind, and we see her change from a happy,
well-adjusted child, into a moody and temperamental adolescent. The ultimate
danger, of course, is that without the philosophical powers of Joy and Sadness
to balance the gut impulses of Anger, Fear, and Disgust Riley will be left in a
place where she can feel very little at all. By moving the action of the film
inside Riley’s mind, and by characterizing her emotions, the disillusionment of
this one child is given apocalyptic stakes (which is, fundamentally, a more
humane vision of the human condition than many of the apocalypses we have seen
on the big screen this summer).
I cried more
than once during the roughly 120 minutes that the movie ran, and laughed more
times than I could reasonably be expected to track. To say that this film
represents a return to form for Pixar after a relative down period does not do
it justice. Inside Out is one of the
very best Pixar films, and belongs on the upper shelf next to Up, Toy
Story, and Wall-E. It is a
titanic accomplishment, and one of my favorite films of the year so far.
Rating: 4 /
4
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