With its Everyman appeal, true characters, universal themes and utter originality, the gloriously animated ' Up' should win, argues EILEEN BATTERSBY, but is Hollywood too cynical for such a leap?
IT'S ABOUT keeping a promise. Admittedly, it took a long time and the threat of being institutionalised, but when Carl Fredricksen sets out to finally keep his "cross your heart and hope to die" part of the bargain to his adored late wife, Ellie, he does it in style. Disney/Pixar's Upis about many things: loss, regret, the cruel speed at which life races by, from youth to age, in a blink; but also imagination, loyalty and courage.
Here is an action movie that has everything; romance, heartbreak, an Everyman hero who shuns designer clothes, suffers from arthritis, doesn’t hear too well, hates developers and hits the guy who unwittingly knocks over the mailbox Ellie painted many years earlier. Russell, the Wilderness scout, intent on getting his Assist the Elderly badge, is a subtle, unsentimental study of an optimistic child making the best of things, including an absent father, while the villain is a disgraced icon.
In the opening minutes Carl changes from being a kid watching a newsreel of an explorer to a man who marries his tomboy childhood sweetheart. They make their dream home, accept there will be no baby, and grow old together. Then Ellie dies and Carl retreats into cranky solitude as his world is threatened by progress.
It is a brave beginning; animators don't usually set out to make their audiences weep. Up marks another remarkable stage in the evolution of Disney, from cute and fluffy classics such as Dumbo and Bambi,to 101 Dalmationsand Jungle Book, and onwards.
Disney was never wary of terror and menace – cue Snow White and the Seven Dwarfsand Sleeping Beauty –but the comedy became sharper with hilarious scripts such as Hercules, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Toy Story,and now Up. Realising he is fighting for his life when all he wanted to do was bring his house to a waterfall in South America, old Carl remarks "I finally get to meet my childhood hero and he's trying to kill me." Up has no moral; instead there is defiance and hope – who wouldn't want to tie his or her house to a bunch of coloured balloons and sail away to fulfil a dream?
A record 10 movies are battling for this year's Academy Award for Best Picture. Most of them have a message, but the one that succeeds in being profound, witty, moving and brilliant – and all with sophisticated originality – is Up. Not since Disney's Beauty and the Beastin 1991 has an animated work been nominated in this category.
Whatever name is in that envelope on Sunday night, there is no doubting that the most convincing nomination is this beautiful adventure about a grieving old man (voiced by the great Ed Asner) and an eager little boy and how they face a series of challenges from adverse weather to a disgraced madman with a luxury airship and 100 electronically talking dogs. Add a giant, chocolate-loving coloured bird and Dug, an outcast pooch who just wants a master, and a sharp script rich in one-liners and suddenly James Cameron's Avatar,more costly than a national debt, looks small, over-computerised and merely worthy. We've somehow seen it all before; even the James Horner score sounds familiar – that's because he also composed the music for Cameron's Titanic(1997).
There is no denying the technology in Avatar. It is spectacular and yes, humans are a rotten, greedy bunch intent on destroying ancient cultures and nature, but we know that. Peter Jackson's Lord of the Ringsalready brought 21st century digital technology to cinema. He was also helped in being able to draw on epic material courtesy of a great novel. Cameron's idea is more conventional and the only good moments in Avatar take place in the forest of Pandora where the technology dazzles, although with the exception of the seed sequences, not as consistently impressive as in Tim Burton's more fluently conceived Alice in Wonderland. The Avatar military installation sequences are badly written and poorly acted. No doubt it will clean up in the special effects awards, but that doesn't make a narrative and for all its visual devices, including flying birds very reminiscent of those in Harry Potter, Avataris ultimately cold and clunky, with too many seams showing.
It is also irritating that so much of the hype surrounding it has been dominated by the rivalry between Cameron and his former wife, Kathryn Bigelow, whose disturbing study of men at war, The Hurt Locker, has also been nominated. Most Americans want out of Iraq and this movie is important if heavily at the mercy of its own polemic. The strength of the script lies in its handling of self-doubt and the point at which devotion to duty becomes confused with suicidal impulses. It is a good movie, if not a great one, and it also shares the bad luck of just about every other movie nominated in that it coincides with a genuine masterpiece, Jacques Audiard's A Prophet, nominated for Best Foreign Film. Everything about The Hurt Lockermerely seems lesser when compared with A Prophet, which is so well made, so well directed, so well acted and so well written. Yet again, in just about every genre Hollywood has to bow to European film-makers, except animation where the US continues to dominate.
It wasn't easy going to see Up in the Air– and then, only because it has inexplicably been nominated – but watching such second-rate, arch corn was even more difficult. Can a movie be that bad? Should a movie be that poor? The most important thing about it is that it illustrates how studios continue to support star vehicles and Clooney is a movie star who occasionally performs like an actor – but not this time. It also confirms that Hollywood is still enamoured of that old-style "romantic comedy". The problem is, the world has moved on and today's movie stars are too cynical to even ham with charm. One would also like to believe that the US has outgrown the Sarah Palin, hockey-mom contrivance of The Blind Sidein which another movie star of even more narrow acting talents than Clooney, Sandra Bullock, gets to do her variation on Julia Roberts's cringe-making, feel-good, Oscar-winning outing, Erin Brockovich(2000).
With six nominations including Best Director, Best Actress and Best Film, Precious tells a shocking story and the realism does leave one shaking. It too is another polemic, and one about the marginalised. But is polemic sufficient? A Serious Manaside, and the Coen Brothers, forgetting their aberration, Burn After Reading, are gifted film-makers, Up is for everyone. It will make you cry and make you laugh. We share Carl's struggle to drag his battered house over the cliffs just as we know Russell will win him over. Should the wrong movie win, any movie other than the miraculous Up, there is only one response. All together, point and shout "Squirrel!".
