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Introduction
- Baylor University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
1 inTroducTion On the opening weekend for one of Disney/Pixar’s more recent animated films, Up (2009), my wife and I settled into two theater seats located in the midst of a frenetically undulating sea of parents and young children. Although this was certainly not strange for a Saturday matinee screening of what is ostensibly a children’s film, we became increasingly aware of the fact that we were not only surrounded by an overwhelming number of individuals whose raw energy belied their diminutive stature, but that we were apparently the only two filmgoers who had failed to arrive at the film that day with a ready-made nuclear family of our own. As we observed numerous parents attempting to corral their children in preparation for the beginning of the movie, we were unexpectedly confronted with the sobering reality that life is so often marked by the palpable presence of an absence—a discernible lack that indelibly shapes who we are and how we see the world. More specifically, our lives were distinguished by the absence of children. After trying unsuccessfully for an extended period of time to bear children, my wife and I reveled in the joy of discovering that we had finally conceived. Yet, as the apparent randomness and absurdity of life would have it, we subsequently lost two pregnancies to miscarriage, each one further reinforcing a certain degree of helplessness and a commensurate loss of identity both as individuals and as a family. 2 Scoring TranScendence It was this very juxtaposition—our personal experience of loss along with the presence of what seemed to be a surfeit of children—that formed the immediate context for our viewing of Up. In the tradition of many films produced by Pixar Studios, Up is not only whimsical and heartwarming but also poignant and emotionally rich. The movie tells the story of Carl Fredricksen , a curmudgeonly old man, and Russell, a precocious Boy Scout and stowaway, as they attempt to navigate Carl’s balloonsuspended house to Paradise Falls, the very destination for the adventure that Carl and his late wife, Ellie, had once dreamed of embarking upon together. Yet, through a particularly touching opening montage that traces Carl and Ellie’s life from the early stages of their nascent relationship to Ellie’s eventual death, we quickly discover that the impetus for this somewhat fantastical journey is Carl’s own sense of loss and regret for allowing Ellie’s life to come to an end while their collective dream remained unrealized. We are thus introduced to a man whose fundamental awareness of the world is marked by the presence of that which is absent—his wife, his love, his life. Consequently, it is this “married life” montage in particular that not only provides the primary impulse for the rest of the film’s narrative but, according to an overwhelming number of viewers and critics, invests the film as a whole with a “beauty,” a “human subtlely,” and an “emotional depth” that move beyond what we typically expect from an animated children’s film.1 Indeed, for my wife and me, the images of Carl and Ellie wrestling with the unique but often unspoken pain of their own miscarriage shifted our experience of the film from mere escapist entertainment into something far more significant. Yet what is most compelling about Up’s married life montage is not simply the subject matter or the particular manner in which the sequence is structured, but the very means through which the film makes its appeal to the audience. Interestingly, in the words of one critic, the film is “filled with long stretches of silence, where the story is told visually and [54.85.255.74] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 05:22 GMT) inTroducTion 3 beautifully without the need for words.”2 In fact, though, neither the montage nor the film itself is actually silent. Rather, much like many films from the so-called “silent” era, Up is teeming with sound, and the married life montage is no exception . During every moment in which we see the discrete images that together form a narrative of Carl and Ellie’s life, we also hear the distinct sound of music—music that is at once uplifting and heartbreaking, winsome and profound. To be sure, the music that is foregrounded in the married life montage is a simple, eight-bar phrase that merely repeats a singular melodic line through the use of differing tempos, textures, and orchestration...