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February 07, 2010
Up
In film circles, everyone has been going on and on for months about whether or not the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ decision to include ten Best Picture nominations instead of five in this year’s awards was a good idea. Now, I enjoy following the Oscars for two reasons:
Reason #1: I like to see films I’ve enjoyed receive recognition. This is something that makes me happy.
Reason #2: If films I’ve enjoyed receive this kind of recognition, then people will keep making the kinds of films I like. This also makes me happy.
I understand what people are saying about how increasing the number of nominees dilutes the honor, which I think is true, but I also have to say that I’ve seen seven of this year’s ten Best Picture nominees, and I enjoyed watching them all. I’d be glad to watch more like them, so I don’t know. It’s nothing to get all worked up about.
One thing that I was glad to see in this year’s plethora of Best Pictures nominees was Pixar’s Up. Last year, I thought it was a crime that Slumdog Millionaire won best picture while the real best film of the year, WALL-E, had to settle for winning the Best Animated Feature category, in which it was “competing” with Bolt and Kung Fu Panda. Of course, Up is in much better company in Best Animated Feature this year (a category in which it is also nominated) because 2009 was a crazy-good year for animated features, but the fact remains that just because a film is animated and just because its primary audience is children does not mean that its merits can’t or shouldn’t be considered alongside live action pieces.
Up is a family film, not in the let’s-make-as-many-mind-numbingly-stupid-jokes-as-we-can way, but in the let’s-engage-some-big-issues-in-a-way-that-children-and-adults-can-relate-to way. Which is difficult. I totally am that old dude trying to figure out how to live my life while clinging to old armchairs, so I may lack some perspective, but the perspective I have can tell you that they got that part of the film right. What Carl goes through is what it’s like to lose your spouse—you get really cranky, you try running away, you start talking to dogs. Showing children that you can be shattered by losing the people you love and that overcoming that is real work is gutsy and truthful in a way that should be recognized. What’s more, the film’s not even a downer. When Carl begins venturing outside the confines of what’s he’s decided is safe, he encounters things that are beautiful and profound and funny along with the things that are irritating and overwhelming and difficult, and those beautiful and profound and funny things make the negative things bearable—for him and for the audience who gets to laugh every once in a while.
It’s not like Up is going to be winning Best Picture—or even that I think it should in this year’s crop of films—but its nomination makes me hopeful that maybe we’re starting to feel a little like we can take animation more seriously. Pixar’s spent a good number of years jumping up and down waving its arms shouting trying to get us to do so. The least we could do is notice.
Posted by adrienne at February 7, 2010 07:00 PM
Comments
I love it when you talk movies. I knew something was up with UP when my dad couldn't stop raving about it.
Posted by: Sara at February 7, 2010 10:09 PM
Thanks--I have been meaning to write about Up a little more since I saw it way back in the summer, but it really was quite intensely emotional for me to watch. I needed some space from it to decide what I really thought.
"up with UP" -- tee, hee.
Posted by: adrienne at February 7, 2010 10:45 PM
I have not yet seen "Up." You have made me really really want to. Whether it's up to something or not.
Posted by: jama at February 8, 2010 06:30 PM
Well-put.
I want to see it again, too, as I was spending too much time trying to help my girls with their 3-D glasses. I just want to *watch* it.
Posted by: jules at February 9, 2010 10:52 AM
p.s. I heard this on NPR last week in the car. Went and found the URL for you: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123281511
Posted by: jules at February 9, 2010 01:44 PM
Jama, You could watch it with some nice balloon-shaped cookies for a snack.
Jules, I didn't see it in 3D, as Tammy and I went to see it at the drive-in, AND WE LEFT THE BOYS AT HOME. Bad adults. Bad.
Re: the NPR piece, EXACTLY.
Posted by: adrienne at February 9, 2010 04:14 PM
We loved Up! Eleanor at 3 is totally too young to really "get it" but she loved watching it anyways esp. the balloons taking the house up! Nice to see it get recognition like this.
Posted by: Cheryl at February 10, 2010 01:54 PM
Cheryl, I think part of Pixar's brilliance is that their art is very visually engaging, so it can be enjoyed by kids who are perhaps too young to follow the whole storyline. They're very good at that layering.
Posted by: adrienne at February 10, 2010 07:49 PM
We are not bad adults, we simply wanted to enjoy the movies, which we did.
Up has been a running theme in my AP class for the last month or two because one of the girls is like Doug, smart, funny, articulate, but easily distracted so we randomly say "Squirrel!" and look somewhere in the room and she ALWAYS falls for it. She is very good natured and strives to be smarter than me, she might be someday...but not today.
Posted by: tonderdo at February 10, 2010 08:48 PM