Exchange of Realities

Over the last year, I’ve found a lot of inspiration and a number of lessons in children’s movies. So when Pixar’s “Up” made it to theaters, I ventured out, notebook in hand, to see what I could find. “Up” did not disappoint; in fact, it was worth several pages of material by the time it was done.

You may remember the last time a Pixar movie made it onto this blog, when I gushed over the span of near-wordless exposition that covered the backstory of Wall-E. In “Up”, Pixar used a similar technique, turning the completely silent backstory exposition into an art form. “Up” doesn’t begin without words, though, nor even with its hero, Carl Fredericksen. Rather, it begins with a documentary about Carl’s hero, Charles Muntz, explaining who he is and where he vanished to (one can practically hear Chekhov’s gun cocking somewhere in the distance) before introducing Carl to the very verbose Ellie, a fellow fan of Muntz, and setting up their (very) long-running relationship.

And that’s when the silence hits. Unlike the scene-based exposition of Wall-E, where everything was somewhere in the background, “Up” utilizes a sequence of silent vignettes to explain Carl’s backstory with Ellie, and not a word among them. Her dropping to one knee in front of him with a ring. The wedding, with Ellie’s family cheering rambunctiously and Carl’s sedately clapping. The exuberant refurbishing of the abandoned house in which they met. Their meetings at work, he with his balloon stand, she in zookeeper garb with a parrot on her shoulder. Picnics on the hill, gestures towards clouds that become fanciful creatures or babies—lots of babies. Construction of cribs and mobiles. Ellie in a chair at the hospital weeping, the doctor and nurse on either side of her, Carl caught between responses outside. Carl greeting Ellie later with their old Paradise Falls picture. A money jar being filled, smashed as a disaster happens, filled, smashed, filled…. The characters getting old and gray. Carl with tickets to Paradise Island in his picnic basket, Ellie staggering up their picnicking hill and collapsing halfway, a scene with her book and his blue balloon mirroring the first sequence. Carl in front of a coffin decked with flowers and balloons.

Five minutes or so. More years than I’m willing to estimate. Thousands of words per picture. At least one napkin worth of tears (your experience may vary).

Also unlike Wall-E, the silence doesn’t go away. If a character in “Up” is overly talkative, it’s part of the characterization (Russell and pretty much all of the dogs come to mind). For almost everyone, there’s at least twice as much meaning in every sentence as there are words, from simple actions like dropping wooden helmet stands or Carl crossing his heart/fingering his little badge to Russell’s context-saturated “Phyllis isn’t my mother.”

The key here is meaning. The images are chosen carefully, for connotation and for association, every detail contributing something to the overall message. Sentences are reduced to the essentials, sometimes pared away until there’s nothing left; do you need to be told that Carl’s thrown his back out or that the house is running out of helium? No. You can see it in Carl’s backward-arched pause and wince, or as the balloons pop or sink.

This, my friends, is economy of dialogue, the diametric opposite of “As we all know, Bob”. This is show don’t tell in its purest form.

This is one of the things “Up” does and does well. And it is beautiful.