If you considered Pixar's creative team a single artist, there shouldn't be any doubt they'd rank as one of the top five filmmakers working today. And when you consider the surprisingly small number of people within Pixar's artistic stable and the cross-pollination that occurs between Pixar projects, regarding them as one entity isn't that big of a stretch.
Despite the advancements in live-action filmmaking, when Pixar made its debut in the late 90s, traditional, hand-drawn cartooning was still the dominant means of creating animation; which is why when Pixar first emerged on the scene (Toy Story and A Bug's Life) most of the attention revolved around their use of computer generated animation. And yet, despite visual masterpieces like Finding Nemo and Pixar's latest, UP, most no longer dwell on Pixar's technical brilliance. Instead, everyone talks about their unmatched gifts for compelling narratives, wrapped up around surprisingly profound themes.
In other words, these guys are for real.
Consider Up, which deals with no less than the unexamined life. Or Ratatouille, which not only looked at the ambition of the artist in the most universal of art-forms, cooking, but the role of the critic in helping define that art, all expressed in one of the most well-written passages in modern cinema. Godard would have been proud. It's no mystery why despite viewing the past three Pixar movies at midnight, all three screenings were packed with adults.
Pixar's latest, UP, tells the story of 78-year-old widower Carl Fredrickson. (Consider Pixar's confidence in their abilities that they were willing to make a senior citizen the protagonist of a cartoon.) Carl and his wife were born adventurers, dreaming of treks in the jungles of Venezuela since they were children. Unfortunately, the realities of life kept getting in the way, and Carl's wife succumbs to disease before the two can ever make their dream trip. Determined to fulfill a promise to his dead wife, Carl flies to Venezuela. The means? Thousands of helium balloons tethered through his chimney that lift his entire house into the air. Along the way, he inadvertently takes on a young Asian-American (!) boy-scout, a talking dog, and an endangered toucan/dodo-like bird as passengers.
It's the mix of harsh realism and the fantastical andabsurd that makes Pixar films so transcendent. Like Picasso's Guernica, Pixar uses the surreal to tap into the subconscious fear and desires of the very real, hidden deep within.
Fellow animating genius, Hayao Miyazaki has long explored similar complex themes. Consider Princess Mononoke, which centres on the struggle between modernity, and nature. Or Miyazaki's colleague Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies, considered by many as one of the greatest anti-war movies ever made. What make Pixar so revolutionary is that they are bringing such weighty fare to Western animation, which has traditionally stayed within safer, more child-friendly territory.
This may be why some were so alarmed when hearing the premise of Pixar's next movie, The Bear and the Bow; taking place in the middle ages, Merida, a princess leaves her family in order to pursue her dream of becoming an archer.
Linda Holmes of National Public Radio, a fan of Pixar's films, pleaded,
I have nothing against princesses. I have nothing against movies with princesses. But don't the Disney princesses pretty much have us covered? If we had to wait for your thirteenth movie for you to make one with a girl at the center, couldn't you have chosen something -- something -- for her to be that could compete with plucky robots and adventurous space toys?. . . Please, please make one about a girl who isn't a princess.
after sitting through the first twenty minutes of Up, i was wondering if the kids in the audience understood what was going on. of course, the movie eventually lightened up but the first twenty minutes was still kind of deep for a supposed kid's movie.