Up!

Just watched “Up”. I recommend this to all, and if possible, watch with your loved one. (Disclaimer, I watched the English version, please do not complain to me you do not enjoy the movie if you watched the Chinese version, I did not watch the Chinese version of this one, but as always, I hate the Hong Kong translation most of the time, they were too creative and add too much Hong Kong bad gag jokes… Just ruin the movie.)

Below are my comments on “Up”, and they contained plots, please do not read ahead if you have not watched the movie yet.

I love “Up”. I cannot say this is the movie I loved most – in fact, there are a lot of movie I love, (and the one always comes to the top of my list is “the Nightmare before Christmas. But then it was more due to the special attachment I had towards Jack, and Sally, whenever I watched this movie, I could almost feel that the part of ‘Jack’ in me was soothed as if there were someone out there who really understood me. Also, the inspiration it gave me, together with the songs and the dark atmosphere, just made me still love this movie after almost 10 years. I had watched this movie countless times, and listened to the soundtracks hundreds of time…. but sure there are a lot of other movies I love, just I did not watch as much).

But “Up” will definitely be one of the movies I can watch over and over again, and had I not resigned and have to be extremely carefully with my spending, I would definitely watch that again right away.

I am a big fan of Pixar. The first time I heard about “Up” was probably when I watched Wall-e in the theatre. Then when I visited Disney California, I watched the trailer 6 times (as each time before they started the drawing lesson, they played the trailer once). The trailer gave me an impression that “Up” should be a happy adventurous movie, like “Toy Story”, “Monster Inc.”, or “A Bugs Life”, a story between a mad grumpy old man with a cute little Asian boy flying in house high up in the sky with helium balloon. And I was expecting a light funny story with some simple message.

Then I heard about all the great comments of my friends in New York saying how wonderful the movie was, and I was so look forward to this movie. Finally it is in Hong Kong, and the trailer was saying “Extreme fun with great laughter!”, so I was prepared to watch a very happy movie. And I watched on the very first day of the show.

But then I was all wrong. This is not a light movie, not at all. And the story is not for kids, or I should say, not targeted for kids. Don’t get me wrong – kids will love the story and enjoy it, but they would not get the sadness and touching bit of the story, and also the message behind. (And actually this makes it still a great movie for kids, or it would be a bit too depressing.)

This movie may not be the one I love most, but it is definitely the first move that made me wept within ten minutes. No dramatic scene, no heart-breaking dialogues (in fact, there were almost no dialogues exchanged between the Karl and Ellie. Karl was the old man, the main character, and Ellie was his wife). The story starts by Karl admiring an explorer and Karl went on exploring around in a kid’s manner. Then he met Ellie, made a promise that they would explore the fall of the lost paradise, and then they felt in love, got married. Everything was simple, sweet and happy.

(The director shown time past by not only by aging of the couple, but also by changing of the decoration in the house, and addition of items in the house. Later I found out how important these were to bring out one of the key messages in the movie.)

Then they were excited for painting a baby room, all of a sudden, the screen was darken a bit, the music slow down, the couple looked really sad in a doctor room. The screen looks so calm, time halted, no crying or no extreme reaction from the couple, they hugged each other and sobbed (without sound), but all these simple stuff add together made me feel very sad and weepy, and tears just came up. I was like “What it this movie going to be like? I was not prepared for a sad movie like this one….”

Life went on, the couple enjoyed moments of their life. Karl recalled their childhood vow – explored the fall in the lost paradise. Karl bought the air tickets, and then Ellie was too weak to go on the trip. Then Ellie was in hospital, then Karl was sad sitting alone.

This all happened in the first 15 minutes (I guess, I did not really count the time, I was really absorbed into the movie). And I feel very sad.

(There was a kid sat around me asking, “Why Karl is so unhappy? Is Ellie Sleeping?” Pixar was quite clever in conveying this sad message in such a subtle way, no only the subtleness makes the pain hurts more to adult, but also kids were not able to understand so the movie would not be too upsetting for the kids.)

Then we saw Karl in his house fighting against a business man, who wanted to buy his house for re-construction. We now understood, to Karl, how important and how special the house is, as he built that together with Ellie and everything inside was a reminder of Ellie existence and their time together. For sure Karl would not agree to sell the house, as he said, “Tell your boss that he can have my house…… after my death.”

Then came Russell the Asian kid. He actually resembled the little Karl a bit, both of them love exploration. Russell was on a mission to get an exploration badges which required him to help elderly, therefore he would like to offer help to Karl. Karl, on the other hand, was grumpy and annoyed by the construction worker, and did not want to interact with anyone, so he just made up a type of bird that does not exist and asked Russell to look for it.

I somehow felt a bit sad for Russell, yet I understand the isolation Karl wanted and needed at that point. He was simply not in a mood to interact – in fact, he just wanted to be with himself inside his house, which symbolized Ellie to him…

Then the construction worker accidentally broke Karl’s mailbox. The mailbox has the palm-prints of Karl and Ellie. This was sad, and without a second thought, Karl hit the construction worker with his walking ‘stick’ and broke the worker’s head. You can tell Karl feel sorry for his impulsive action, and I think he was genius sorry for hitting the worker, not for the possible outcome for hitting the worker…

Then the business man sued Karl and the court order Karl to move to retirement house. Seeing Karl sitting in the house all by himself made me felt real sad, even though I knew from the trailer that the house is going to fly with tons of helium balloon, but, sad.

Then Karl came up with this idea of flying house with balloons – balloon was the ‘communication device’ between Karl and Ellie when they were small. So, off he went with those balloons, those colorful balloons, colorful house in the blue blue sky, everything was so wonderful. (And this is the first moment that I felt enlightened, after the first 20 minutes of intensive sadness.)

Then someone knock on the door, so it was Russell who was hiding somewhere near the house when he tried to catch the unreal bird. Karl, with no choice, had to let Russell join his journey.

(I really doubted if anyone could have gone this far and read until now :P )

Then there was a thunderstorm, and “magically”, they landed on the cliff right opposite to the fall of the missing paradise. Since they could not fly back up to the sky as there were not enough helium, Karl decided to carry the house as if carrying the helium balloon to the fall. Russell helped, and then they met the ‘unreal bird’ Kevin (named by Russell, only later he found out Kevin was actually a ‘she’), a dog which can speak human language (actually the dog could not really speak, but he could as there is a high-tech collar which probably can interpret the dog’s mind, whatever, this is not that important).

I forgot the name of the dog. (Actually there were other dogs. All these dogs have the high-tech collars and reported to a ‘master’ (who made those collars). Basically these dogs needed to catch that ‘unreal’ bird and report to the master.) And did not quite get why the dog decided Karl was his master, instead of his original master.

Then somewhere in the journey, Karl promised Russell that he would protect Kevin.

Later Karl met his childhood hero, and found out that actually this childhood hero was the master of the dogs. He wanted to catch Kevin to prove he was right. And this was like the one and only one goal for this childhood hero (again I forgot the name).

When the “hero” tried to catch Kevin, he set up a fire on the house. Karl left Kevin to put off the fire, and Kevin was caught by the “hero”. They flied away in the hero’s airship. Russell shouted for help, but Karl has to save the house. In fact, it will be too dramatic that Karl did not save the house but leave his house to burn to ash and fought for Kevin.

Russell was very angry, and went after the airship by helium balloons and a vacuum cleaner. Karl put off the fire and went inside the house, trying to check the items inside the house, and found out the adventure book created by Ellie in her childhood.

He sat on the sofa, read the book again, until the page written ‘Stuff I am going to when I grow up”, it was the end – it was the end the last time Karl read it. But now, after this page, there were lots of pictures, showing the happy moments between Karl and Ellie. At the end, Ellie wrote, “Thanks for the adventure, now go and start a new one.”

Karl realized that he came all the way here to fulfill his childhood promise with Ellie – to explore the fall of the lost paradise. But the real promise was actually exploring together. And yes, they spent their whole life journey together with ups and downs. This journey was unique and adventurous. In fact, life is an adventure, love is an adventure. Adventure is not where you go, but what you explored, what you experience. In this sense, Karl kept his promise with Ellie.

Now, Karl realized that he had to keep the promise with Russell – protecting Kevin. But there were not enough helium to bring the house up to the sky again…

Unless the house became lighter.

Now, we see a very determined Karl throwing away all the precious items inside the house, first the mail box – the very mail box which made him hit the construction worker, then other items.

The determination of Karl in dumping all the precious items shocked me a lot. I myself love collecting and saving items, I even kept my primary school reports… True, what we experienced and what we are going to experience was far more important then the items, after, items is just an items. Precious memory will stay with us, and ownership of the related items was no longer necessary. Even worst, if we cling items or memories too much, we would miss a lot of ‘present’ and a lot of more important experience.

Then Karl and Russell together fight the ‘hero’ and saved Kevin. And Karl gave Russell the very special ‘badge’, the ‘badge’ hand made by Ellie using bottle cap as a membership for the adventure club between Ellie and Karl. This tiny bottle cap actually is the start of their story. And, the story, between Karl and Russell, as ‘grandpa’ and ‘grandson’, will go on. This is just sweet.

I love this quote Russell said, “Sometimes, it's the boring stuff I remember the most.” When he recalled what he did with his dad. (Somehow I did not quite get Russell’s dad condition, was he married to another woman? Or he was dead? Or he was a busy working man? I don’t know.) To a kid, spent time with his parent doing boring stuff is more important then anything else, and same to adult – I think, if you real love some, you will enjoy the boring time with him/her. Sometime Hong Kong people were too occupied by the business and they just could not stop and enjoy boredom.

Also, you can see there are a lot of simple, yet details, items in the house, e.g. the picture of Ellie, the little bird, the mailbox, all represented the memories of Karl with Ellie. I felt for Karl when I saw those small items are almost destroyed in the bad weather, and even later by the fire set up by the bad guy…. But later, when Karl made the decision to throw away all the items to reduce the weight of the house so that he can go ‘up’ in the sky again to save Kevin and Russell, the determination is so real to me. I was really impressed by how the director uses this simple story to convert this message. (May be I should let go some of my items.)

Another simple message, if you don’t persuade your dream when you are young, one day it may be too late. But then, it is never too late to step out. Once you stepped out, you have the momentum to go forward, and you have the strength to go forward.

Sigh, how I want to watch that again. $_$

By the way, the short film before Up is Partially Cloudy. It was funny and touching. And next year, we will have Toy Story 3! Can’t wait to say hi to our old pal Woody and Buzz Light-year.