Love Hurts

There are moments of awareness that occur in the course of some romantic relationships that can change them so completely that what was cemented over time bursts with the fragility of a soap bubble. This is the reality of love, and what is masterfully captured in the film 45 Years.

There are not that many films about romantic relationships that present the point of view of a woman who realizes that the man she loves and with whom she has built a life has never really felt for her what she perceived. While many films capture the range of romantic relationships, curiously they don’t capture what has probably led to more divorces than anything else. This is not love lost, it’s love that never really was.

In 45 Years a childless couple, Geoff Mercer (Tom Courtenay), and his wife of 45 years, Kate, played with stunning realism by Charlotte Rampling, are living a supposedly happily-married life in the English countryside when Geoff receives word that that the body of Katia, the girlfriend of his youth, has been found preserved in a glacier in the Swiss alps where she went missing a half-century ago while they were on a hiking trip. This is the beginning of the unraveling of Geoff and Kate’s relationship and Kate’s realization of the relationship she was really living. This takes place over five days.

Charlotte Rampling in 45 Years

Movies capture a vast range of romantic relationships. Maybe too many of them are of the they lived happily-ever-after kind (derogatorily referred to as “chick flicks”, by sexists). There are also a lot of the love goes tragic kind where something or someone gets between the lovers, yet their love is mutual and never dies (even if one of them does). Illness strikes, for example, and we have all the way from the cancer that separates the young lovers in The Fault in Our Stars, to old-age dementia in Michael Haneke’s amazing Amour. It can be war and/or a marriage to someone else (marriage not for love) that separates the lovers, and there are as many of those as there are rom-coms, including some greats like Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca, Joe Wright’s Atonement, Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient, Neil Jordan’s The End of an Affair, or even Francois Truffaut’s Jules and Jim, to name but a few. There are also those about society’s senseless mores that separate lovers: racism, homophobia, classism; movies like Ettore Scola’s We All Loved Each Other so Much, Todd Hayne’s Far From Heaven, Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, or even Robert Wise’s West Side Story (and all the other Romeo and Juliet inspired films).

But I can think of few movies that address the true heartache of realizing the simple fact that the one we thought loved us as much as we loved them never really cared that much, but fell into the comfort of being loved. In 45 Years there is the complication of a terrible deceit, not uncommon in these relationships. In fact, they are built on deceit.

Meryl Streep in Heartburn

There is Heartburn, directed by Mike Nichols, which comes to mind. Heartburn is based on Nora Ephron’s autobiographical novel about her marriage to Carl Bernstein. Ephron wrote the screenplay to the movie and this is without a doubt why this movie contains so much heartache. Ephron has penned some of the most successful romantic comedies ever, including When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail, and Sleepless in Seattle, but without a doubt Heartburn is the only real relationship of the lot.

And now there is 45 Years, which tops the list. The film is beautifully directed by Andrew Haigh, who does a wonderful job of keeping the pace of the movie on track with the crumbling relationship. But it is Charlotte Rampling who makes this film into a masterpiece. As movie critic Peter Travers writes: “In 45 Years, Rampling shows us everything a true actress can do without a hint of excess or a single wasted motion.”

I’ve written about romantic films on Valentine’s Day before, being the die-hard romantic that I am, but for every love that lingers in its happiness, it is undeniable that there are probably ten that don’t. So here’s to this reality of love as well. There are many movies about the wonders of love and then there is that final scene in 45 Years in which we are witness to that heartbreakingly haunting stare the brilliant Charlotte Rampling gives of a life lost to love.

Are We All Savages?

I am quite in awe of many elements of The Revenant. The movie has fantastic cinematography, breathtaking locations, great performances by Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Forrest Goodluck, Domnhall Gleeson and more, a now very famous bear scene, and the recreation of a time period to the dirtiest, grittiest detail, all well assembled by the talented hand of Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu. I also noted the inclusion of the First Nations; an ancillary inclusion, but inclusion none the less, something which DiCaprio is now lifting in his award acceptance speeches.

There are, in other words, many things to admire about this film. However, it has left an aftertaste that is feeding a growing discontent with the film in its entirety. The story is based on the pirate, frontiersman, fur trapper and trader Hugh Glass, who died in 1833. Glass is a frontiersman of lore because he was mauled by a bear and left without supplies or weapons by his fellow fur traders, yet he managed –with the help of Native Americans- to make it back to Fort Kiowa, in South Dakota, 200 miles from where he was abandoned. That’s the skeleton of a story that Iñárritu takes and makes into The Revenant, a tale of survival and revenge full of brutality, ruthlessness, viciousness and pain far worse than even the original story ever had. It kind of brings to mind that macho-nostalgia western that is becoming Quentin Tarantino’s specialty. It becomes one of those movies, like Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, that you admire while watching, but never see again, because most people aren’t masochists.

The majestic landscapes and the beautiful winter scenery is interspersed with a man being brutally mauled by a bear until he is left a human rag, leg broken, flesh torn; and then the same character is suffocated, buried alive, falls down cataracts, then off a cliff, shot at, knifed and, well, yes, he survives it all. That’s just one character. More natural beauty and then a blood bath of a battle scene between the fur traders and the Ree People in which a live actor, naked, is dragged through the mud. Another beautiful landscape and a woman is being raped, and so on, throughout the whole movie.

The real Glass lived many years after the bear attack and never took revenge (much less the bloody revenge we see in the movie) on Fitzgerald or the younger man that left him to die. In fact, he continued to work as a trapper and fur trader until many years later he met his death on an expedition, under the attack of the Arikara People once again.

So Iñárritu had to add to the skeleton story, it would seem to justify a lot of the violence, and to bring the audience closer to the frontiersman Glass. This is where he brings in the Native Americans in the form of Glass’s son and wife. The real Hugh Glass apparently had no native son to fuel his revenge, nor any known Native wife to visit him as a ghost. The inclusion of Native Americans is, as I mentioned before, auxiliary to the plot, not the main point at all. The main point seems to be the two white men, the rugged traders, Glass and Fitzgerald, both survivors in the rough frontier days, the latter a man who also stands in for those working-class, oppressed men who get the short end of the stick from the American Government in the form of the Captain of the fort.

 

Forest Goodluck in The Revenant

 Iñárritu is not one for subtle messages, as we know from Babel or even Birdman, so he makes sure the audience knows he’s taking a stand for the Native Americans losing their lands and their lives, being immersed, in the process, in the different squabbles between the Europeans. There is even a sign that reads: “We are all savages” in the movie. But beyond that and because the story focuses on the Glass and Fitzgerald rivalry, it’s not clear what the director actually meant the audience to come away with respect to the First Nations (so maybe that’s why their mention in the acceptance speeches are necessary).

All this may be the reason that The Revenant has gotten such polarized reviews and disparate interpretations about its central point. A writer for the Guardian has called it “meaningless pain porn (…) A vacuous revenge tale that is simply pain as spectacle” much like, this journalist adds, “putting a camera in a cage and then setting a man on fire" and filming it, which is what some terrorist groups have done.  This same writer wonders: “This empty, violent movie will scoop up awards. What does that say about society and our attitude to violence?” That’s pretty much the same perspective that The New York Times film critic has, although for that critic the movie is “An American Foundation Story” (American as in the white, European settlers and frontiersmen, not the Native Americans).

Tom Hardy in The Revenant

On the other hand there are reviews like those of Rolling Stone Magazine, which is all praise for the movie, yet begins by warning: “Note to movie pussies: The Revenant is not for you” (confirming the macho-nostalgia aspect of the film). For that critic, the movie is about surviving nature (not quite sure if he’s considering Native American attacks as part of “Nature”).  This critic adds: “That's the movie. And a visceral punch in the gut it is. You could gripe about the excess of carnage and lack of philosophical substance. But surviving nature is Iñárritu's subject, and he delivers with magisterial brilliance. “

Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant

Yes, you can “gripe” about the excess of carnage and lack of philosophical substance and I think the critic, in his praise for the film, hit it right on the nail. This is a movie that deserves to get the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki and maybe even the awards for acting for Tom Hardy and Leo DiCaprio, although they both have tremendous competition in their fields (in particular Leo, because of Eddie Redmayne’s spectacular performance in The Danish Girl), however there is still a group of film lovers that prefer the beauty of the allegory, the things not said or shown directly, but dexterously implied, like that baby carriage bumping down the steps of Odessa.

A Farewell to a Gentleman Actor

Colonel Brandon, the Sheriff of Nottingham, Professor Severus Snape, Hans Gruber. Alan Rickman didn’t just play these characters, he created them.  “Jo” Rowling, as he called the author of the Harry Potter books, is the first to recognize how much Rickman added to Severus Snape, the character he played for so many years in the Harry Potter films. And I believe there will never be a better Sheriff for Robin Hood, nor a better Colonel Brandon to make Mary Anne regain her faith in humanity and all of us Jane Austen readers to wish such a man would come along to save us from despair and disappointment.

Rickman was an artist in every sense of the word. He didn’t begin acting until he was 28 –he was a graphic designer before that- and he didn’t make a film until he was 41. His first film was a very Hollywood action movie, Die Hard, but it was that much better because of his portrayal of Hans Gruber, who went on to be considered among the top movie villains of all time.

 Alan Rickman was also a very good director, directing two great women and friends of his: Emma Thompson in The Winter Guest (1997) and Kate Winslet in A Little Chaos (2014). How much sadder does it feel to see that his art grew and that we know he had so much more to give us!

There are two films that Alan has left behind, which we will see with the same heart break that we saw the films that “outlived” Philip Seymour Hoffman or listen to David Bowie's Blackstar, released just a couple of days before his death. The first is Eye in the Sky, in which he stars alongside Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul, playing Lieutenant General Frank Benson, the man placed as a go-between Mirren's military Colonel and the board of government representatives tasked with the ultimate decision of whether ridding East Africa of some of its most dangerous militants is worth the death an innocent young girl. The second is Alice through the Looking Glass where he voices (with that incredible and inimitable voice of his!) the blue caterpillar.

He has been immortalized by his films, yet we will miss him dearly.

I’ve Seen that Movie Too

Carol feels like an old film. It is set in the America of the late fifties, but that is not what makes it anachronistic, but rather it’s belief that the audiences watching it are stuck in that time period. We're not. Not to say that its a bad film. Carol has a lot going for it, in particular the very detailed and beautiful photography and amazing production and costume design, enhanced by the two gorgeous actresses that play the title roles, Cate Blanchet, as Carol, and Rooney Mara, as Therese, now both candidates for an Academy Award for their performances.

   

Rooney Mara as Therese

The trouble with the movie is that it suffers from what I will call the Brokeback Mountain syndrome, which is that while supposedly addressing the issue of homosexuality through a love affair in a place (Brokeback) or time period (Carol) in which the discrimination against those relationships was extreme, in order to call out that discrimination, it does so almost apologetically, directed at a straight audience, as if it were trying to “sell” the love affair to straight folk. In the process of doing this it sacrifices reality.

Cate Blanchet as Carol

This approach starts with the fact that both films use straight actors to play people of a different sexual orientation. The audience knows this because we live in a world of instant information, so it somehow already detracts from the subversive intent of a film that is trying to show the fluidity of sexuality. Wouldn’t the beautiful Jodie Foster or Portia De Rossi been a better casting choice in Ms. Blanchet’s role? And Rooney Mara could easily have been played by Ellen Paige or even Kristen Stewart, who showed much more realism with a gay role in Clouds of Sils Maria (also about the relationship between an older woman and a young gay woman). They most likely would have brought more realism to the roles but, more than that, isn’t the point to offer these roles to actors that are probably looking to expand the landscape?

This is really an oddity, considering that Carol director, Todd Haynes, is identified with the New Queer Cinema movement. Haynes has addressed sexual identity and societal norms in other of his films, like Far From Heaven, Poison and Safe.

But since gay actors can and do play straight characters, why not have straight actors play gay people, even though, in this case, the gay relationship is at the center of the plot? So, let’s leave that aside. The next faux pas of the movie is the relationship of the main protagonists itself. Does anyone really believe in love at first sight? Is that romantic at all in the twenty-first century? Or are we to assume that this is what happened among gay women in that time period? Watching Carol you can’t help but think: who behaves like that? What adults seriously fall in love at first sight and with literally no context beyond their good looks, they turn their lives inside out. Even if we accept that the sexual magnetism was strong, the movie never really develops anything else. There is never any complexity in the relationship between Carol and Therese. That may have passed muster in those Hollywood films of old that no one (not even back then) really believed, but in the twenty-first century of Supreme Court rulings and a stronger movement towards gender equity, it is hard to swallow.

And while both Ms. Blanchet and Ms. Mara, who have more than proven their value as superb actresses, are good in their roles, there is really nothing that extraordinary about their acting. That is, nothing like how we’ve seen them act before, for example Ms. Blanchet in Elizabeth I or Ms. Mara in Girl With a Dragoon Tattoo. Unless, again as was the case with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback, the award is for acting like a homosexual person in a love relationship.

Finally there is the very contrived plot in this screen adaptation. Carol, played by Ms. Blanchet, is about to lose custody of the child she supposedly loves profoundly, yet when the drunken husband takes away her daughter and threatens to file for full custody, does she follow in another car to make sure her child is all right? Does she call him back to negotiate and get him to come to his senses? Does she even try to see her daughter? No, she picks up her suitcase then gets Therese, the much younger woman she has fallen in love-at-first-sight with, played by Ms. Mara, and goes on a road trip! She’s seen this woman all of two times, one for less than five minutes. So, this is love?

Despite the mink coats and money Carol obviously possesses, the road trip they take is to the worst little towns and motels possible in the Midwest, and in winter! And yet still they somehow manage to get caught on tape in the process. In the end (spoiler alert), Carol cedes custody of the child she loves in exchange for the young woman she barely knows but apparently loves more. Is this really a happy ending?

Could it be that even though the director is gay, he is a man and so this all appears plausible to him? What did the author of the book intend as the happy ending? The book on which Carol is based, “The Price of Salt” by Patricia Highsmith (author of other novels taken to the big screen, like Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, or Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley), may answer some of the questions raised. Ms. Highsmith is rather legendary for having been a person who did not like people much and who, despite being gay herself, discriminated against black people and was outspokenly anti-Semitic. She did not have long term relationships or children, and was described as rather cruel and harsh. An anecdote, it seems she lived with cats and about three hundred snails in her garden in England and once took hundreds of snails in a handbag to a cocktail party saying they were her "companions for the evening".

Most of the audience will know little of this and will remember only Mr. Haynes adaptation, which is, again, captivating in its visual beauty, with its old Hollywood-style actresses in a romance –a gay romance- story with a happy ending. All very straight and acceptable, but not very real.

The Martian: Ridley Lite

If you’ve been following my blog for a while you know I am a fan of Ridley Scott. (See posts: The Insightful World of Ridley Scott – 4/13, No Two Replicants- 5/13). There are therefore few Ridley Scott movies that I do not like (The Counselor, GI Jane), but I do recognize that even within the well made films he has two styles, which I will call Ridley Deep and Ridley Lite. I like both, don’t get me wrong, but obviously prefer the former. The Martian, the movie that opened in theaters yesterday, is Ridley Lite.

By now it’s clear that a genre Scott dominates is science fiction, and Blade Runner and Alien are the jewels in his crown in that field. Those two, along with Prometheus (the Alien prequel or sequel, nobody is quite sure which), are Ridley Deep. They are deep because the magnificently depicted future and story line is not flat and acts mainly as a setting to have us reflect upon the ways of us humans within this little planet called Earth, a speck in the universe.

Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) in Blade Runner

In Blade Runner the meditation is around technology and our relationship with the machines we create “in our own image” (there’s a divinity theme there, frequent in Scott’s movies) and perfect to the point that they become independent of us and, ultimately, turn on us. But there is more. It is also about the limits of our humanity. When the replicant Roy Batty gives his beautiful Tears in the Rain speech at the end of the movie (“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it?”), after demonstrating the depths of his humanity, we’re thrown into a whirlwind of thought about the things we create and destroy, the extent of our feelings for others, the world we were given and have gone through with such disdain.

Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and cat in Alien

Alien pits humans, a woman this time, against a being that has possibly been engendered as a weapon by those “God-like” creatures we see in Prometheus. This is the weapon that the humans in the corporation behind the Nostromo want the crew to bring back to Earth. As Ash, the android on board the ship, so aptly states: “The Alien is a perfect organism. Superbly structured, cunning, quintessentially violent (…) How can one not admire perfection.” The value of human life for corporate greed could be one way to put the theme behind the movie. It’s also somewhat present in Blade Runner, where the Tyrel Corporation has created the replicants for profit. Again we are looking at the limits or boundaries of our humanity. And it is ultimately the woman –a gender much disdained in our world- who faces the Alien. She says: “This is Ripley,W564502460H, executive officer, last survivor of the commercial starship Nostromo signing off (…)Come on cat.”

Matt Damon in The Martian

And then there is The Martian, much closer to the present than the other futuristic movies, about a NASA mission to Mars; no corporations this time, although in real life there is already a private company looking into getting people to Mars. It’s hard to find a deeper theme here than the story line itself, basically a space Robinson Crusoe. Could it be that we’re to reflect on whether the NASA program should be continued? Maybe a lesson in how  one life is worth the billion dollars it takes to save it? Maybe that Mars is really not quite that uninhabitable and should be the next planet to colonize? That’s already a given, more so now, with those photos of liquid water sent from Mars.

Even so, it is a movie worth watching, because nobody does science fiction like Ridley Scott. The panoramic views of Mars, like the awe inspiring opening views in Prometheus, the detail with which technology is presented, the FX, the cinematography, set design, acting, score and more; everything so carefully executed. Matt Damon is great in the movie and totally outperforms the other actors in the movie and leads it, sort of like Sigourney Weaver did in Alien. It is about a man’s will to survive and also our scientific minds. But it’s still lite because this is as far as it goes and because it has such a good-feely sentiment to it, kind of like a better Armageddon.

The Aries space craft in The Martian

It is also, curiously, a little bit careless in its science. Not to the point of Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity, with its Wall-E-like fire extinguisher scene, but it does kind of melt down towards the end. For example, the story probably takes place in the not too distant future, but still probably no earlier than 2080, given that it’s estimated we could send a small human mission to Mars around 2030, but it will probably take longer to develop the Aries IV space ship we see in the Martian.  So about 80 years into the future, yet everybody on Earth is totally 2015. Then there is the pretty well known fact (it’s been on NPR) that a lot of the equipment needed for a human mission to Mars has already been developed, including the MOXIE, the machine that separates the Hydrogen from the Oxygen. So scenes like the one where Matt Damon blows himself up trying to do just that is something baffling. We also know quite a lot about Mars, for example the gravity (62% lower), the radiation a person would suffer on Mars (forcing humans to have to live underground), and more.  A lot of which is omitted in the movie. The implausibility of the final rescue scene is well within Gravity sloppiness.

Space rescue in The Martian

Ridley Lite is still Ridley Scott, which is to say he’s still way better than most directors. So enjoy. The Martian is a movie that will keep you in your seat, eyes glued to the screen, rooting for the man everyone wants to bring home. It is a movie that fills you with a warm feeling about the strength of the human spirit and the power of the human mind, in particular when it decides to "science the hell" out of things.

Rising From the Ashes

 

    

Summer can be the perfect time for a hiatus from a movie blog. It’s the time of year for the film industry to make the big dollars that company stockholders are expecting, so it’s blockbuster season. A rather arid time for lovers of film as art. However, my hiatus has been only in part been due to this. I’ve also been on vacation and away from movie screens, as much as that has been hard to do.

I wasn’t completely gone.  I did treat myself to some very excellent documentaries, in particular The Wolf Pack and Amy, which I comment in the Fresh Cuts section of this blog (I reiterate my invitation to click the Fresh Cuts tab to see ratings and short comments on all the films I see).

 I also saw the blockbusters that got the good reviews, in particular Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Man from UNCLE. I reveal my age by telling you that I enjoyed watching Mission Impossible and Man from UNCLE as TV shows, when I was a child; this makes it just that much more fun to show up for these–so much better – film versions of the shows.

The fifth installment of Mission Impossible did not disappoint. Tom Cruise is certainly committed to his work and the airplane lift-off scene, where he didn’t use a double or green screen, is truly worthy of applause, as is the motorcycle chase scene in the movie (amazing editing!). It’s a very fun film to watch, which I know is what Cruise was going for and what he’s best at. 

Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

Man from UNCLE has director Guy Richie’s style, established with his two Sherlock Holmes films, which is to say it is also a fun movie worth paying to see. The beautiful Alicia Vikander, of A Royal Affair stature, made more famous by Ex-Machina this year, delivers her charm in the movie, and entices in her cold war relationship with Arnie Hammer, one of the two very good looking leading men of this first in what promises to be a film series. Television on the big screen.

Arnie Hammer, Alicia Vikander and Henry Cavill in Man from UNCLE

All said, it was the American July release of the German movie Phoenix that really rose above all other as the must see movie of the year for me… so far (fall begins). The director is renowned German director Christian Petzold (Barbara) who again works with the amazing Nina Hoss (Barbara, A Most Wanted Man) in a movie about the enduring trauma of the holocaust in post war Germany. The movie takes place immediately after the fall of the Third Reich, as we see in the opening scene where American soldiers stop a car travelling with two holocaust survivors in Germany: Nelly (Hoss) and Lene (Nina Kunzendorf). Nelly bears the scars of the war both internally and externally, requiring plastic surgery, and Lene, the one person that truly loves Nelly, bears profound scars internally and quietly. They look to each other for emotional survival after the colossal trauma of what each has lost and suffered, but Nelly’s husband Johnny is still alive and with him some unbearable secrets. The movie has most definite resonances of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, as Nelly and her husband Johnny begin to weave a fascinating and lethal web of deceit.

Nina Hoss and Nina Kunzendorf in Phoenix

The acting in the movie is superb, as is the story-telling. There is a little of film noir and a lot of that dark feeling around this time period that is so well conveyed by European films. European film makers, without necessarily using explicit and graphic scenes of the horror of the Holocaust, are able to express such horror with truly creative subtlety. This film now joins such great films of this sub-genre, like Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s Das Schlangenei (The Serpent’s Egg), or Hungarian director István Szabó’s Mephisto. It is a story about the nature of human beings in times of extreme tribulations and what we are willing to endure and forgive, because of love; how we are also able to betray and destroy; and, ultimately, how we can regenerate, like the mythological Phoenix, and rise from the ashes or our lives, again and again. 

Teach Your Children Well

There is one territory that humans are only at the brink of uncovering: our brain. The fascinating to the point of magical world of the brain and mental health is yet to be well understood and our studies are really in their infancy. But we have made progress, definitively moving away from the psychoanalytic couch into a sphere where we’ll be using the tools of genomics, neuroscience, and exposomics to forge ahead in our knowledge; and it seems we’re letting the kids (and their parents too) in on some of the its neat workings in this wild ride of a movie, Inside Out, that is Disney Pixar’s digitally animated incursion into Riley’s brain!

Amy Poehler as Joy

Not only does Inside Out present children with a fascinating view of some of the mechanisms and complexities of our brains (yes, a movie that actually gets kids to think about something), but it does so in such a dynamic and creative way, and with such rounded out and developed characters, that it completely engages the viewer emotionally. That’s a lot to say, especially when the characters are supposedly one-dimensional emotions: joy, sadness, disgust, fear and anger. The movie is a feat of writing, animation and also voice acting. I have to stop here and give a loud cheer for the amazing Amy Poehler and how incredible she is as the voice of Joy! Truly, what a joy she is! What a way to give life to an animated character! All the voice casting is wonderful in this film, to tell the truth, which just makes Amy’s art all the more impressive. Richard Kind is tearfully great as Bing Bong, Riley’s imaginary friend, Phyllis Smith plays sadness, Bill Hader is fear, Lewis Black anger and Mindy Kailing disgust. Perfect casting!

Minnesota born Director Peter Docter, of Up and Monster’s Inc. stature, in collaboration with Philippine art director Ronaldo Del Carmen, have made a movie that lifts us out of the theatre and takes us on an emotional roller coaster ride into the brain and emotions of its main protagonist, eleven year old Riley who has been uprooted from her life in Minnesota and taken to San Francisco, where her dad has moved to pursue his career.  Simple enough, except for the changes that this event and her growing up mean to her brain.

Richard Kind as Bing Bong

With this movie Pixar is also taking another step in the right direction of breaking away from the little “boxes” society likes to create around situations and people. It does so by choosing the interesting story line, as we’ve mentioned, but also by finally casting another female lead. Of the fifteen feature films Pixar has released, this is only the second that has a female lead. The other one was Brave. The difference with Brave, however, is that that movie seemed to be set on making a statement about having a female lead, a “hey, Pixar is finally casting a female lead and she’s strong and brave, even though she’s a girl!”. Where as in Inside Out there’s no need for the statement. It’s more natural. The person in whose brain we’re inside just happens to be a girl, a hockey playing, smart and great girl. So in our still quite sexist society, boys / men can feel just at home with the movie as girls have always had to feel with all other Pixar films. Brave, however, still holds the honor of having the only female director a Pixar film has ever had, albeit a co-director. Brenda Chapman, who co-directed Brave, went on to become the first woman to win and Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Inside Out, while not directed by a woman, does have Meg LeFauve as one of the screenplay writers.

So this movie does it right and gets rewarded in the process. Inside Out made over $90 million dollars on its opening weekend, which means, in terms of all 15 of Pixar’s films, that it has only been topped by Toy Story 3. It would not come as a surprise if Amy Poehler received a –well deserved- Academy Award nomination for her voice acting.

What should be most rewarding to the makers of Inside Out, however, is that it is providing a thought provoking, emotionally charged, creative, quality film for children. And this is good. This is, hopefully, a drop in the bucket of helping them be just that much better than their parents. And that's the best thing film can do, teach them well.