INSIDE OUT: Sweet Emotions

Twenty years ago Pixar Animation Studios revolutionized cinema with the first full length completely computer-generated film. Two decades later and Pixar is still one of the most consistently groundbreaking studios in the business. Inside Out provided a great opportunity for Pixar to reinvent itself in the wake of a slough of mediocrity.

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Directors: Pete Docter, Ronaldo Del Carmen (co-director)

Writers: Pete Docter, Ronaldo Del Carmen, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley

Cast: Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Richard Kind, Kaitlyn Dias, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan

Runtime: 94 mins.

2015

A scientist believes if you pick a lie to pieces, the pieces are the truth!

-Eugene O'Neill

The idea that your body is one whole and complete object is a lie. The idea that you govern yourself by a unified rational consciousness is a lie. The idea that you are in control is a lie. Inside Out picks this lie to pieces and represents the pieces anthropomorphically. They are Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and any number of other little blobby brain workers skittering through your mind. The five primary emotions live out their lives in the control center (Headquarters). They are literally in control.

Pixar's latest film feels like a discovery. There's a whole world inside of us--more than that, a whole social system. That system is responsible for all the functions of the brain (emotions, dreams, memories, abstract thought...), and when the system is broken, the person is broken. This is the world of Inside Out, where the stakes are of the utmost magnitude: a little girl's happiness.

The success of Inside Out was not a foregone conclusion like it would have been five years ago. Pixar has fallen into a bit of a recession in the past half-decade. Not enough of a slump to turn away longtime fans, but enough to make people start biting their nails. Since 2009's Up (also directed by Docter), Pixar has released two sequels, a prequel, and one original film. They delayed the release of two upcoming original films, such that 2014 was the first year since 2005 without a Pixar release. As far as the future was concerned, they announced four impending sequels (Finding Dory, Toy Story 4, The Incredibles 2, Cars 3) with precious little information about original projects down the pipeline. Folks were worried that maybe, just maybe, Pixar had become an agent of compromise like every other filmmaking studio.

The one original property released in that five-year span, Brave, had a notoriously troubled production. Pixar's first female director, Brenda Chapman, was fired halfway through the production and replaced by a fellow named Mark Andrews. Pixar found itself in the crosshairs, accused of sexism and micromanagement and all sorts of nasty business. The release of Brave did little to remove the bad taste from the public's mouth. Brave delivered on the base level of what it promised--a strong female heroine who goes on a magical Scottish adventure--but messy tonal shifts and a lack of propulsion kept it from achieving the mantle of "instant classic" like most of Pixar's oeuvre. To nobody's surprise, it feels like two different movies smashed together.

At one point, it looked likely that Inside Out would suffer a similar fate. Animation films have a much longer development cycle than live action movies. That means most animated films spend years in pre-production. During that entire time, director Pete Docter didn't feel like he had the film quite right. He had the basic concept: the human mind is governed by five main emotions, and those emotions are in charge of directing human action and processing important memories. But as far as the arc for Joy (Amy Poehler) was concerned, Docter felt like he was hitting a brick wall. As he tells it, the film was ready to start production and he was so distressed about its unreadiness that he took a long walk. During that walk he contemplated quitting or getting fired, and realized that he would miss his friends at Pixar more than anything else. Thus Docter realized the function of emotions as the driving force in interpersonal relationships, a lightbulb moment that caused him to restructure the entire movie so that Joy would be paired with Sadness (Phyllis Smith) instead of Fear (Bill Hader). He pitched this idea to his superiors even though it would require a heavy loss of time. Being the wise Pixar executives that they are, they encouraged Docter to make the changes. Pixar once again proves that it has a deeper understanding of the importance of story than just about any other film studio.

Good thing too. The pairing of Joy and Sadness is the perfect plot device to tease out the thematic depth at the core of Inside Out. A physiological coming-of-age story, the film begins with Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) and her family moving to San Francisco from Minnesota, a life change that prompts all sorts of external and internal changes that neither Riley nor the band of emotions running Riley know exactly how to handle. Joy and Sadness get separated from Headquarters, leaving Fear, Anger (Lewis Black), and Disgust (Mindy Kaling) to run things while they journey through all the colorful facets of an eleven-year-old girl's mind.

The character work is incredible, and I love how each of them relate to the others in various seen and unseen hierarchical structures. Riley and her family are not especially remarkable, but that makes their status as the backdrop for massive internal action all the more effective. Our exploration of Riley's inner world is woven together with her physical actions such that they never feel disconnected. That makes Riley a fully fleshed out and empathetic character. I felt connected with her in a way that I didn't with Merida, Pixar's last female protagonist.

Inside Out's three main characters are all female: Riley, Joy, and Sadness. This whole movie is one big fat Pass on the Bechdel test, with Joy and Sadness spending most of their conversations talking about another female's well-being. Joy and Sadness are excellent foils for each other. The entire cast performs admirably, but Poehler in particular brings Joy to life. Poehler was inspired casting; I can't fathom an actor who could improve upon her alternately forced and childlike happiness. People and characters who are too happy tend to grate on me, but even my grinchy self couldn't help but root for Joy.

That sort of happiness can be suffocating though, which is where Sadness comes into play. I won't talk much about how their relationship develops because it is foundational to the film, but I will say that the dynamic is mysterious and fascinating from the get-go. The tripartite relationship between Joy, Sadness, and Riley is one of the most complex relationships I have ever seen in a movie aimed at children.

Still frames of the movie kind of make Joy look like a bad Tinkerbell knock-off, but all such conceptions are erased as soon as you see Inside Out in motion. The characters' clownish movement sets immediately clue us into their characters; the way they move is captivating. The visual artists have done some amazing work with light in this film. Each character glows like a bundle of energy. The rest of Riley's mind is given considerable attention to detail. This is the kind of world that feels intuitive and obvious--of course memories are portrayed as glowing glasslike spheres--but it only takes a little bit of thought to realize how inventive these moviemakers had to be. The imagination required to render everything from abstract thought to a forgotten imaginary friend is staggering.

I'm a bit surprised to say one of my favorite aspects of this film was the sound design. I was immediately taken with the sound the memory globes make when they knock against each other, a sound that is repeated with many different variations throughout the movie. They sound like bowling balls made of light, and their caroming was endlessly satisfying. Michael Giacchino also does some good work on the soundtrack, crafting a recurring theme that sounds alternately precious, ethereal, and businesslike.

This colorful cartoon is unexpectedly businesslike; the mind is portrayed not unlike a factory. This hearkens back to Docter's first directorial effort at Pixar, Monsters, Inc. That movie was about workers in a cold, emotionless business who struggle against the system to enact change. Inside Out gives us a more nuanced version of this story, with the characters sometimes struggling against the system, and the system sometimes struggling against the characters. The film is not quite as funny or heartbreaking as some of Pixar's other efforts, but it more than makes up for that in sheer conceptual brilliance.

That's where the movie truly shines: the central concept and the way it plays out visually. Inside Out digs deep into the personality, and represents it in one of the most systematically thoughtful ways I have ever seen in a movie. It's easy to latch onto the world presented for us. For every ten things the movie shows us, we have a hundred more questions, not because the film is incomplete or withholding, but because everything is so detailed that the world feels lived-in. In that respect it is like our favorite fantasy worlds.

Perhaps the most important lasting effect of Inside Out is the way it functions as an educational tool for children. The intuitive splendor of the world on display is going to teach a lot of kids about the everchanging complexities of their emotional worlds. Kids watching this will learn that what they consider the "self" is actually a squabbling amalgamation of many different impulses, dreams, visions, and deep dark fears, any one of which can run amok if the body is somehow physically or affectively imbalanced.

It's important for kids to learn from science that their bodies are made up of small inhuman entities that drive them to action, but Inside Out goes one step further. Inside Out does not take the side of either the humanistic actor or the scientific atomistic being. Inside Out picks apart the lie of the self, but does not consider its pieces the truth. The emotions aren't any more true or infallible in their function than Riley. Instead, they exist in relation to each other, a dynamic social system. Riley works on them just as they work on Riley. That is why Joy can learn what she can about the importance of Sadness. It's all just a part of growing up, and Pixar demonstrates better than anybody the pitfalls of that ubiquitous and terrifying phase.

4 / 5  BLOBS




The Short: Lava

The short before Inside Out is about a volcano in the middle of the ocean singing and waiting for someone to love, while a female volcano listens to his daily song just beneath the sea. The short takes place over the course of millions of years, probably, and we get to see some eruptions. This is all underscored (overscored is perhaps more apt?) by an incredibly twee ukulele song that includes recurring lyrics such as: "I lava you."

The song is still stuck in my head, of course, but I hate it. It's probably the most crassly sentimental thing Pixar has ever created. Honestly, we didn't need the lyrics to understand what was happening in the short. The volcano has a face that smiles at all the animals who are hooking up, then stares mournfully into the middle distance. The whole plot is telegraphed by the visuals--the song was a mistake. That being said, those visuals are achingly beautiful and heart-rending in their own right. When I finally decided to ignore the song, I found myself moved by the tale of two lonely volcanoes at the mercy of time and geology.

2.5/10