Inside Out
(2015):
Written by Pete Doctor, Meg LeFauve, and Josh Cooley, directed by Pete Doctor
and Ronnie del Carmen. Starring: Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith,
Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Richard Kind, Kaitlyn Dias, Diane Lane,
Kyle MacLachlan, and, of course, John Ratzenberger. Running
Time: 94 minutes.
Rating: 4/4
I suppose I should start this with a
weeping confession that I, too, had joined the ranks of heartbroken masses
convinced that Pixar’s glory days, at least for now, were behind it. Both the noticeable drop of quality in their
works following Up and Toy Story 3 and the announcement that
the coming years would mostly just bring a slew of unneeded and unasked-for
sequels to earlier, greater works seemed to be unmistakable signs that the
great animation powerhouse that rose to challenge Disney in the late 90’s was
finally succumbing itself to Disney Syndrome, willing to sit back for a while
and just rest on its laurels, yet still somehow roping in every Academy Award
for animated movies simply through being the lone nominated film any of the
voters bothered to see that year.
While that would, generally
speaking, be true, I always found the hand-wringing over the “Fall of the House
of Pixar” to be a bit overdramatic.
Sure, it looked like Pixar was drifting away from the focus of
powerfully-written “original” ideas that became its hallmark in the 90’s and
2000’s, but it’s important to remember just how impossibly spoiled we were for
a while there. As fantastic as the run
of Ratatouille, Monsters Inc., The
Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Up, and the Toy Story franchise was, no studio can keep up a streak like that
indefinitely. So some uncertain times
for the animation giant were always somewhere in the cards. Nonetheless, it is indeed an immense relief
to see that, even if the 2010’s end up being less definitive and revolutionary
for American animation than the 2000’s were, Pixar is still capable of
providing us with films like Inside Out,
tales of immense and invaluable artistic integrity and beauty.
The twist this time around is that,
while we do have a nominal human as a protagonist- a 11-year-old girl named
Riley- the real characters of the story are Riley’s five core emotions, each
represented as their own figure and personality, vying for control over how
Riley interprets and responds to the world around her. The details of how the movie visualizes
something so ethereal is astounding to watch.
A central control panel is used to put ideas into words and actions,
many of them provided by literal trains of thought that pop in and out of
existence. Experiences that become new
memories roll down a shoot as a glowing, glass ball, and most of them are then
shipped out while Riley sleeps to long-term memory. Special ones, designated “core memories” that
shape key aspects of Riley’s personality, are assigned a special storage rack
of their own inside the central room where the core emotions reside. They each, in turn, are the basis of each of
Riley’s Islands of Personality. At the
beginning of the movie, she has five, although we eventually learn that the number
of such islands one can have is not by any means fixed. The emotions themselves are hypnotizing to look at, seemingly composed of endless tiny glowing light particles.
Each of the five voices cast are
perfect fits for their respective emotions- there is the ebullient Joy (Amy
Poehler), morose Sadness (Phyllis Smith), sneering Disgust (Mindy Kaling), over-wrought
Fear (Bill Hader), and, my favorite of the bunch, Lewis “Smoking-Out-Of-His-Ears”
Black as livid Anger. While Disgust,
Fear, and Anger get some of the movie’s better gags, the narrative heavy
hitters are Joy and Sadness. In a
fitting parallel to the travails and growth of Riley as a whole person, each of
the emotions is still learning their proper function as well. Joy tries way too hard to run the show,
seeking to shunt away Sadness and keep her from touching any of Riley’s
memories, ESPECIALLY the now very precious ones from Minnesota (when one of the
emotions directly touches a memory, especially a core one, they seem to “color”
it with their essence, meaning that that emotion will be the one Riley will
primarily feel whenever she recalls it).
However, Joy’s efforts to push away
Sadness and keep Riley constantly happy grow increasingly impossible to manage,
where the loud, cacophonous dissonance of Riley’s new circumstances seem to
bring one problem after another. Each
bad or uncomfortable experience leaves Joy and the others befuddled about how
to respond, until after one particularly bad incident results in Joy and
Sadness are launched out of headquarters and into the endless shelves of
Long-Term Memory.
Now, with only Anger, Disgust, and
Fear at the helm, Riley starts to head down a very self-destructive path, one
that breaks apart the core aspects of her personality we spent the first part
of the film becoming familiar with.
Literally unable to feel either joy or sadness, and effectively falling
into depression as a result, Riley is literally losing her entire sense of
self. Thus, Joy and Sadness have to put
aside their differences and find their way back in time. They even eventually get some help from Riley’s
old imaginary friend, Bing Bong, who had been toiling away for years in Long-Term
Memory, forgotten. And along the way,
each is forced to learn a bit more about their proper role in maintaining Riley’s
sense of being.
Much has made of the “accuracy” with
which Inside Out depicts the various interior
workings of the conscious and subconscious mind, but I feel it bears
remembering that, for all our advances in technological studies, the mind still
remains a realm where both individual and broader cultural perspective matters
immensely- the “Five Central Emotions” concept used here is just one
interpretation of many in terms of how the mind operates, one that is not
accepted globally. There may come a time
when future neuro-scientists look back at this movie as hilariously backwards
and quant.
That said, how this movie depicts
the literal machinations of the mind is ultimately far less important than what
it has to say about life in general, and about the trials of growing up and
learning to see the world through fuller, more mature, and more emotionally
complex eyes. Fittingly, it is a journey
each of the emotions need just as much as Riley as a whole does. At long last, we have a wonderfully made
family film that lots of people are going to see that actively avoids simple
answers for the problems of self and growth that it presents. One of the core messages of the film is so
simple, yet so forgotten by many, that it’s practically revolutionary-
sometimes, you just need to feel sad for a bit to make happiness seem all the
sweeter.
As with most Pixar works, Inside Out not only gets the core of
visual and written storytelling right, it is also stuffed to the gills with
lavish side details that fill out the film wonderfully. A sequence where Joy, Sadness, and Bing Bong
experience the stranger, more abstract mental states stands out as being some
of the most creative and interesting animation we’ve yet seen in a CGI
work. Also, on the occasions where we
jump out of Riley’s head and into the minds of other people, note how the control
panels and emotions of each mind are arranged.
Note which emotions seem to occupy center stage (Joy in Riley’s case,
but not so in others) and which ones are more to the side, suggesting which
emotional states dominate the daily life of the individual concerned. Also note that, while the 5 emotions seem to
have the same form in every mind, within each person they all display some
aspect of the real person’s physical appearance, regardless of whether or not
said aspect fits to an emotion’s apparent “gender.”
While the whole movie is filled with
great laugh moments, the character that provides the most consistently is
easily Lewis Black as Anger, which deserves its own gold trophy for Perfect
Casting. Another favorite moment of mine
happens towards the end. I won’t spoil
it, but will say that, speaking from personal experience, it perfectly
encapsulates a large part of what being a hormone-ridden teenage boy feels
like.
The movie has already been out for a
while, so you have all heard the hype, but like with my other favorite film of
the year, Mad Max: Fury Road, Inside Out earns every word of praise
spoken in its honor and more. If you
missed it in theaters, make sure to treat yourself to the DVD the minute it
comes out.
-Noah
Franc
No comments:
Post a Comment