Up analysis: part one

Alright, mah bro’s and ho’s. Word. This here is mah movie o’ choice fo today’s essay. I’mon try me one of them symbol analyses and cinematographical exposes. And unlike mah other exposes, this one won’t get me on the sex-offenders list. Yeah, you heard right. Imma track the prevalence of various symbols in Pixar’s ‘Up’, as well as point out somma them camera angle things that English teachers like talkin’ bout.

Fortunately, I will be doing so without the use of a gratuitous and unreadable gangster voice. I have other essays sitting around discussing the themes of this movie, plus a particularly thorny one involving the limits of free speech. Not in ‘Up’, though. That one’s in general.

This is – sad, it must be said – my fifth run through of the movie, twice since the end of the holidays. Since I’m not sick of the movie, and keep on wanting to watch it over and over again, I obviously need to analyse the crap out of it until it gets boring.

I strongly recommend that if you haven’t seen the movie, don’t read this. Not only will it spoil one of the greatest movies of last year, but it also won’t make sense. Reading this without watching that will ruin two things at once. You might as well shoot yourself.

Right. The film begins with a 1920’s era newsreel, complete with jumpy editing and bombastic music. It tells of Charles Muntz, great aviator and explorer of the day. Right in the first thirty seconds of the film, we are shown the hero’s destination: Paradise Falls.

Foreground darkened and leafy, background lit. No faces visible. This immediately tells us a few things about Paradise Falls. 1) It’s in the jungle. 2) It’s idyllic, as seen by the rays of sunshine and so on; it is a goal. 3) It is, because of the explorers, tied with adventure. Not just any adventure: a specific brand of Boys Own adventures that were promoted in the twenties and thirties. This is the adventure of a bygone age: Carl’s age.

Here, in the same reel, we are shown Charles Muntz, the movies villain. We see: his dogs, a heroic swagger, his airship, the concept of “Adventure is out there”. At a glance, due to the upward shot, the fact that he is lit, and obviously the crowd of admirers, we can see that this is a hero – a man to emulate.

Same, really. This shot just fits in with the others to show the dominance and importance of this man. These shots, at the beginning are among the most important in the film, because they define not only the goal of the film, but also the beginnings of Carl’s motive for getting there: to have an adventure. Note that all of the shots of Charles Muntz are distance shots; he is important, yes, but he isn’t the main character. We don’t get to know him personally.

Whereas the very first shot we SEE of Carl is a close up. Slight upwards angle, to show that he is also important, but nothing as extreme as the Muntz shots. His helmet shows him to be a Muntz admirer. Carl values and misses his childhood as an old man, which is why so much of the movie is taken up depicting it. The spectacles mean that we can instantly recognise him as the same person after Pixar gives him a jaw line. Not pictured: weed.

So after that, little Carl pretends to be an explorer and the film stretches a little humour out of it. He’s carrying a balloon that says “Spirit of Adventure,” same as Charles Muntz’s blimp. Balloons: watch for them.

This here is the first shot of The House, which is the primary location for the movie when not just non-descript jungles. The yellows show decay – this is an unhappy house. Showing the house first in decay sets us up for seeing them rebuild it, and thus why Carl is prepared to let the bird die for his house’s sake. See here that it is colourless and dull during their childhood, and colourful and vibrant during their adulthood. This is mainly Ellie, who despite the lack of a single word of dialogue, always seems to give the impression that she never grew up.

Interesting to note here also is the balcony. The beams here are all rounded, but later in the film they are clearly square. Make of that what you will. My personal guess is that when Carl first sees this place, it is Ellie’s place, and she is signified in the movie by ovals, while Carl is signified by squares. Having oval balcony beams shows us that here, it is her place, when they move in together, it is THEIR place. This is important because at times, Carl seems to equate the house and his dead wife as the same thing. Having it originally as her place furthers that, even just for a few frames.

This is the same way Carl pilots his house once it gets airborne later in the film. Also, that beam is broken, yet still aligned. It makes no sense.

Another shot that becomes very important later in the film: again, Carl pilots his house from the same position.

I just love the details that Pixar has put into their film. Later on, Ellie is depicted as quite a talented artist. Here, as an eight year old, she has a simple water-colour stapled to her view-port in her clubhouse. It is a detail that would make no sense on first viewing, is only on the screen for less than a second, could be easily dropped no worries, and yet is included anyway.

This is the Ellie Badge in its first sighting. It is symbolic not only of the life-long and somewhat childish relationship between the two, but also a message of the banality of love. It isn’t the big things, like the wedding ring, that Carl or Pixar find important, but a beaten up badge selling ‘Grape Soda,’ given to Carl as a child. This ties in with Russell saying that his favourite memories with his Dad were sitting on a curb counting cars. “I know that may not sound interesting, but it’s the boring things that I think are important.” This symbol is VERY important. The ultimate message of the movie is that Carl goes on an adventure to prove his love to Ellie, but she never needed or wanted big adventures, but a happy, boring life. This is Carls revelation at the movies emotional dénouement. After an album of joyous photos of everyday life, Ellie writes “Thanks for the adventure, now go have a new one!”

Carl wears this badge all his widowhood because it reminds him of her, yet it reminds him of her for the wrong reasons. When he gives it to Russell, it shows that he has moved on from Ellie, and recognises the true significance of his badge. Accordingly, the next scene is of Carl and Russell, sitting on a curb counting cars.

The balloon with the stick is a mini-motif, but ties in with the movie as a whole as well. Ellie does it to alert Carl. You can tell that this has symbolism, because it makes much more sense for her to just call for him, but that wouldn’t be nearly as dramatic. Carl does the same thing with the balloon and the stick to Ellie on her deathbed as a conscious attempt to remind her of their youth, and a lame attempt at humour on Carl’s behalf. Later, Carl ties balloons to the roof of his house as a conscious attempt to remind himself of his youth, but that’s another story.

His arm is in a cast because of stuff that happened in Ellie’s clubhouse, where Carl hurt himself falling off a thin beam to fetch his balloon which had made its way to the far end of a floorless attic, but I didn’t get screenshots of that.

This is the tail end of Carl’s crossing his heart. Promises and the keeping of them is one of the big motifs running through this movie, so it’s important that there’s a little ceremony associated with them. Without the X over the heart and palm in the air, the pain associated with Carl’s many made and broken promises wouldn’t seem nearly as important, and we would wonder why he bothers. Physicalising his promise-making gives the whole thing more drama and cinema. We want to SEE his promises as much as we want to HEAR them.

After all the groundwork done so far with showing how Carl values his childhood and the artefacts associated with it, it should be clear by now why “My Adventure Book” means as much to Carl as it does. Along with the Ellie Badge, it is one of the oldest of Ellie’s Relics, as well as meaning much more to begin with. This book symbolises throughout the movie the Spirit of Adventure. It is childish at first, then forgotten. It is dragged out to revitalise Ellie, then is prominent in their lives. Eventually, they don’t need it anymore, and it is forgotten once again. Finally, Carl drags it out one last time, dusty and worn, and sets his life around the fact that it’s empty. Of course, it isn’t; that’s the point of the movie. Adventures aren’t necessary for excitement, and Carl’s Adventure finally turns out to be grumpy, boring walking for the majority. When his Adventure is sidetracked by Carl having an adventure, the movie happens.

This is The Goal: to get their childhood clubhouse to the top of Paradise Falls, and sit it right next to the river itself. Why this goal? It was obviously a joke back then; why does Carl take it so seriously?

Carl thinks that Happiness is a goal – an achievement. Ellie and Pixar think that Happiness is something that happens on the way. He is sad that the life that happened wasn’t the life he wanted, and thinks that if he goes on this last adventure, his life would be complete. This is why he refuses to go to the retirement home; that would be an admission that his life had ended without the adventure he always dreamed of.

One of the things that drew me to this movie was the fact that Carl’s journey is a suicide mission disguised as a children’s story. He has no food, no plan, and no way of getting home. It is not stated directly, and perhaps is a little fanciful, but it must be seen that Carl has nothing to live for. Everything precious to him at the beginning of the movie had been taken away from him except his house, and that was about to go as well. This goes a long way to explaining his motivation for going to Paradise Falls in the way he did. His Act Three transformation into Carl Fredericksen: Super-Senior is a character change away from the past and into the future. He lets go of his house – his one remaining precious object – because he has found a new family, in Dug/Alpha, the dogs and Russell. He has something new to live for.

And that brings us to the end of this thing, except for the fact that I have a TON more screenshots to explain. The time of the last screenshot is just shy of five minutes in, yet I managed to get 1,916 words out of it (14,916 words counting pictures.) So hey, I might even do another of these. If you aren’t lucky.