FINDING NEMO: The Emotion of the Ocean

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. Leading up to the release of their new film The Good Dinosaur, I will be going through Pixar's entire filmography at the rate of two movies a week. Today it's Finding Nemo, which still maintains its quality and power despite everyone quoting it to death for years after its release.

Other Reviews in this Series.

Director: Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich (co-director)
Writers: Andrew Stanton, Bob Peterson, David Reynolds
Cast: Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Alexander Gould, Willem Dafoe, Brad Garrett, Allison Janney, Austin Pendleton, Stephen Root, Vicki Lewis, Joe Ranft, Geoffrey Rush, Andrew Stanton, Elizabeth Perkins, Nicholas Bird, John Ratzenberger
Runtime: 100 mins.
2003

Finding Nemo is Pixar's second stone cold masterpiece, and the starkest departure from their previous film is a visual one. I mentioned in my Monsters, Inc. review that although the monsters looked great, the characters spent most of the movie running around corporate hallways that lacked any visual pizzazz. Almost as if Pixar heard that very complaint and determined to never again allow their films to be accused of visual mediocrity, Finding Nemo is one of the most epic, expansive, gorgeous masterworks of production design ever created by computer animation. The visual landscape is at times populated by Pixar's signature visual gags, like a group of fish popping out of a doting mother fish's mouth, but for a far larger portion of the runtime the picture is dedicated to images that flirt with the sublime. The ocean is vast and full of darkness, terror, wonder, perversion. Finding Nemo captures all of this while still somehow maintaining a G rating.

The story follows overprotective clownfish Marlin (Albert Brooks) who must cross vast expanses of ocean in search of his son Nemo (Alexander Gould), who was taken by scuba divers and imprisoned in a dentist office's glass tank. Along the way Marlin meets Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), a forgetful blue regal tang, and together they encounter all sorts of friendly help and unspeakable hindrance.

I could drone on about the visuals, and how every aspect of the production works perfectly together to accomplish its goals. The way the sound design emulates the rush of swimming when the characters are progressing, or how the music (an excellent score by Thomas Newman) cuts out and the camera pulls back when the characters are confronted with the vast void of open water. But the absolute best thing about Finding Nemo, if I were forced to select a single best thing, is the way that all of these choices exist in service to the story. Luckily it's a damned good story.

Every character we encounter has some sort of handicap or flaw. Nemo and his mentor Gill have gimpy fins. Dory suffers from short term memory loss. Other characters display signs of schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, germophobia, crisis of ethics... the list goes on. This is a sea full of misfits who need the help and support of others, and none more than our main character Marlin with his crippling PTSD. Years after the opening scene Marlin still suffers from the trauma of losing his wife and children. He is overprotective and susceptible to panic attacks. His arc through the movie is legitimately inspiring, and the whole film is designed to emphasize just how odyssean his task is. Every trial he faces: unknown waters, the blackness of the deep, sharks, whales, terrifying predators, gulls, minefields, jellyfish, etc. etc... every challenge knocks us back with its enormity, only to raise us into triumph as he faces his fears and tries so hard to make up for the one time years ago when he wasn't quick enough.

Since we are usually rooted in Marlin's perspective, the sea should feel terrifying, and Stanton and co. deliver on that premise. Many scenes feel like flat out horror movie material. The way the great white shark dwarfs the protagonists, for example, and its teeth stretch across the entire frame. The way its eyes go black when it catches the scent of blood, and the way it lunges with such speed and ferocity. One particular classic horror shot recurs three or four times throughout the movie: that shot where the characters are preoccupied and/or arguing in the foreground while a sinister shape emerges from the background, unseen by our heroes. It's chilling every time. Then there is the scene of Marlin's wife's death, a perfect reveal that turns a bit of conjugal seahorseplay into pure horror when Marlin emerges from his home to find his wife staring at something offscreen. Then the image, this image, with all the sound cut out but a chilling musical sting:

It's an unsettling, unforgettable shot that functions far more potently than anything from most R-rated horror movies.

Unlike those movies Finding Nemo is not a cynical exercise in misery. Quite the opposite, it is a humanistic narrative set in a majestic world and populated with memorable character after memorable character. Every moment in this movie has a purpose, and it gets to feeling like the great wide ocean revolves around the emotional journey of this hapless father and hopeless son. All the central story pieces of Finding Nemo issue directly from cherished memories of writer/director Andrew Stanton (in fact this was a rare example of an animated film going into production with a completed screenplay), and all of that love and care shows. Finding Nemo is, and will likely remain, the best-selling DVD of all time, and I cannot think of a better title to be invited into the homes of families everywhere.

5 / 5  BLOBS

The Short: Knick Knack

Knick Knack is the story of a snowman who wants to escape his snowglobe so he can have sex with a Sunny Miami bikini-clad figurine. I'm really not joking about that. I understand that in short films, especially animation, stereotypes are required as shorthand for motivating characters, but it's still worth mentioning that apparently Pixar's issues with gender representation go waaay back (especially considering the hubbub surrounding gender roles in their most recent short Lava). As you can probably tell by the primitive image, Knick Knack was originally released in 1989, not 2003.

It's not a bad short film. Despite the limitations of the time period, the snowman dude is cheekily expressive, even as the female lead is painfully, if perhaps intentionally, vapid. The story doesn't get any more complicated than a Looney Tunes style escalation of absurdity with regard to the snowman's attempted escape. Like their other early short films, I guess you could call this a simple morality tale, or perhaps you could call it the story of a horrible person. The best part about the film by far is Bobby McFerrin's original music, a catchy doo-woppy mouth noise kind of tune. It elevates the material.

2.5/5