If you haven’t seen Disney Pixar’s Up, then you are a bad person. You need to accept your faults and find the nearest toddler you can get your hands on and use him or her as an excuse to go to this movie. Or if you’re secure enough in your inner child, go by yourself.
The film is extremely layered and more complex than most Disney movies. Sure, it has its fair share of adult jokes to entertain parents and the most perfect portrayal of what dogs would say if they could talk that I have ever witnessed (I won’t repeat any of it here because it will truly ruin it for people who want to see the movie), but the themes in this movie are what make it so special. I will be discussing parts of the film in detail, so SPOILER ALERT for anyone who cares, but honestly I think reading this would only provide a lens through which to view the film.
Firstly, it contains a poignant vignette detailing the childhood and relationship of Carl Fredrickson and his wife Ellie. As children, they vow to adventure together to Paradise falls in the footsteps of their hero, explorer Charles Muntz. The children grow up and end up getting married and building their dream house, all the while saving up for their adventure. But life often comes with curve balls and they never quite get around to seeing their goal through before Ellie dies and Carl is left with their house full of fond memories and dreams of Paradise Falls. This part of the movie could honestly stand on its own. The story telling is winning and perfect. Bright and funny, you fall in love with the children versions of Ellie and Carl before they fall in love with each other. The depiction of Ellie is particularly articulate. A firecracker, she helps a stifled young Carl to come out of his shell and includes him in her adventurer club.
When I was younger, my best friend Pam and I used to create clubs just about every day. We had soccer clubs and spy clubs and God knows what else. I know we would have had a great relationship regardless of these childish enterprises because we’re like sisters, but I think those clubs did have a very special way of keeping our imagination and impulsive sense of adventure at full throttle. It was very believable to see the relationship between Carl and Ellie bloom from the seeds of their adventurer club to the full bloom of life long love because in my own life, I have grown into such intimate sisterhood with my friend Pam. By intimate, I mean to say honest self deprecation and the examination of the soul rather than some torrid lesbianic affair that the word “intimate” brings to mind for some people. So keep it in your pants, gents.
During the montage of the relationship between Ellie and Carl and her ultimate end, the story tellers gave us specific visual cues to hold onto; the way Ellie always has to set the little, red, ceramic bird on her mantle at the right angle, the mail box that Ellie and Carl put their hand prints on, and most importantly, Ellie’s adventure book which she shares with Carl on eve of their first day as club-mates and presents him with on her last day on Earth.
The first half of the book is filled with Charles Muntz idolatry and drawn pictures of her dream house resting at the top of Paradise Falls. The second is labeled with a title page that reads:
“The Things I’m Going to Do.”
During the powerful montage, Ellie and Carl strive to do those “things” but other things always get in the way and Carl is wracked with depression when he realizes that his wife will never get to fill in those pages. I think we all dream about the things we’re going to do. When we’re children, we’re allowed, encouraged even, to dream up elaborate lives and goals for ourselves. I often think about where I am as opposed to where I thought I’d be. I’m not old enough to be a sage, but I do know that life takes you places you didn’t necessarily think you would go. I also have my journals from my clubs with Pam and they are similarly half full. I never did join the CIA or play soccer in the Olympics so after a while I ran out of things to record from my life as a Secret Agent with a cover as a famous professional athlete.
I was surprised to find that the screenplay writer, Bob Peterson, was not afraid to touch the subjects of Ellie’s miscarriage and personal tragedy at the very outset of the film. I knew I loved this film during the transition from the sepia tones of the sensitive and tender scenes of their wedding and renovating the house and colorful shots of the couple painting the nursery for their expected child, to the stark shot where Ellie finds out she’s miscarried, followed by the shot of a concerned Carl watching her from the window as she is seated in the yard. There was something about the oddly placed wooden dining room chair sitting on the grass and her hair gently wafting in the breeze that was so sad and so intimate. There was also a collective gasp when Ellie died. A little girl sitting in front of me poked her mommy in the arm and exclaimed in disbelief, “She died!?” It brought to mind the first time I saw Bambi. However, when Bambi’s mother dies its a good way through the film. This was within 10 minutes of the start, and yet we as the audience had already felt the weight of a lifespan of love and loss.
For Carl, Ellie lives on in their house through her pictures and the chairs sitting side by side that the couple had enjoyed in their living room, her picture on the wall, and her adventure book. Unfortunately, as is the case with many lonely, elderly folks these days, he ends up facing the reality of a nursing home. Rather than cave and leave his beloved house behind (which he talks to as if it is an incarnation of his dead wife), he opts to spend his last dime and use every remaining helium tank and balloon from his balloon cart to fly his house and his memories far away from his hometown and the waiting nursing home attendants.
This image was so gorgeous and poetic to me. He packs all of his grief, loss, and stubborn habits into his house and takes off with them, leaving the world behind and ready to live cloistered in them for the rest of his life in solitude and peace. When he escapes, he’ll be able to dwell as much on the past as he desires rather than facing the changing modern world springing up around him.
Little does Carl know, his nemesis, a young “eagle scout” who constantly tries to give unsolicited aid to the elderly is stuck on his front porch.
The two characters embark on an adventure to Paradise Falls where they nurture and enrich each other in ways I certainly didn’t expect. Of course it was predictable that the kid would breathe new life in Carl’s stale existence, but what I didn’t expect was the portrayal of the boy named Russell. 
He wasn’t just a lively kid that reminded Carl of his wife and how they had acted together as children. Russell was the victim of a broken home. His mother was dead and his father left. Russell describes his memories of his father pinning on his scouting badges and how he hoped that getting this final “Aid to the Elderly” badge would bring him back. I was struck by the brilliant writing of this monologue that exposed how memories of someone aren’t always exciting. They’re just the little important boring things about existing with a person that you remember after they are gone, whether they leave you by choice or they are taken from you.
I relatively recently got out of a long term relationship where I was truly in love with someone. The things I remember and miss aren’t necessarily trips we took or the highs and lows of our time together. I remember waking up next to him and snuggling close, or the way he draped his arm over may waist when we watched Lost on my laptop at night, knowing that I would almost immediately fall asleep- Just the little things that make a house a home.
When they land at walking distance from Paradise Falls, the man and the boy begin dragging the house towards that “promised land” as it floats above their heads. In a moment, instead of being a vehicle, it becomes an obstacle that Carl must contend with and eventually let go of. I found that it was such a perfect metaphor for loss.
You let loss carry you for a while. Then you carry it until you’re ready to let it go.
Watching this play out on screen was such a joy, both in the sense that I giggled and in the sense that I cried. I truly recommend this movie, and for me, seeing it in 3D at the Regal Union Square was worth every penny.
Recently, I was inducted into the company of “Box Full of Wasps Theater Collective” to be a part of the creation and performance of a piece based on the book Mike and the Magic Cookies, by Jon Buller. I’m very excited to be reconnecting with Jenna Freed, the Creative Director of The Collective and the Director/Conceiver of the show, and Emily Floyd, the Co-Creative Director who is also performing with me. I spent my first year at the Playwrights Horizons Theater School with Jenna in the much beloved Purple Group of 2004-2005 and spent my time in the Acting Practicum at Playwrights with Emily. Both are creative minds I trust and admire and I am extremely thrilled and honored to be working with them.
