Aspiring musician Miguel, confronted with his family's ancestral ban on music, enters the Land of the Dead to find his great-great-grandfather, a legendary singer.PG | 1h 45min || 21 Nov 2017
Directors: Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina
Stars: Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt
Genres: Animation Adventure Comedy Family Fantasy Music Mystery
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2380307/reference
Watched at the sticky-floor theatre Mainplace SA.
I looked at the Soundtracks page a while ago, and saw lots of songs performed. But while watching the film today, I didn't get the same impression. I doubt that I'll watch this again to track whether the multiplicity of songs is really a lot of brief segments or perhaps even samples.
I got tired of tracking the mythology of the film. I could read more about Dia de Muertos, but I'm not interested whether the film is faithful to the pre-Spanish southern and central-Mexico traditions. (I was curious about it's origins and geographic popularity, so Wikipedia got a glance.)
I can see why the story required animation. Live actors can't portray the dead quite so well. But until we got to the Land of the Dead, I was fascinated by how life-like yet not creepy the animated living creatures looked. Just the fact that they had 4 fingers and a thumb on each hand, and the hands also looked lifelike, struck me. Even with computerized animation, I wonder how much longer this took to produce than a life-action version would have taken.
I liked the colorful spirit guides. My high school mascot was the griffin, so flying mythical beasts are ok by me, and then giving them the multiple colors like tropical birds was candy for the eye.
I didn't do a head count, but I felt like there were about 10-20 people in the theatre for this Tuesday matinee. But this is 4 months after the film's release, and you can buy used copies of the dvd already, so it's really a testament to the success of this film that it's still in theatres at all. I picked a good location to sit, because I was joined by several others in my row and immediately behind me.
So when I felt the urge to yell out "sing the song!" when Miguel wants Coco to remember her father, and that hasn't occurred to him yet, I managed to suppress it.
And when I started crying, I tried to sniff only when the movie made more noise. Fortunately my scarf was multi-colored, so any stains shouldn't be too visible.
I don't want to see this again. My tears were not happy or strictly sentimental. During the murder trial on which I was a juror, one of the hard things for me was thinking that no prosecutor could trot out similar hardship witnesses if I were the murder victim, especially if I were retired. This film is all about remembering the dead in order to keep their spirits alive in the next world, but it admits that eventually everyone vanishes from there when the last person forgets them. I chose a solitary life, and I love it, but society does lots of things to discourage it, like this big sales pitch on family (which only works because they come around to supporting Miguel's music).
So I acknowledge it was a good film. Good characters, good story, well-presented. I had a moment in the middle somewhere that I wanted them to "move it along", but that's probably true of most films. But like The Best Years of Our Lives ('46), which I also like, I don't want to watch it often/again. It's just too sad. (And drama is NOT one of the 7 genres assigned here.)
Favorite line from the film, when Miguel finds out who his great-great-grandfather is: "A minute ago I thought I was related to a <spoiler censor>! You're a total upgrade!" I wonder how that terminology will be heard in 80 years. Y'know, by the artificial intelligence that watches old movies just to tilt their heads and wonder.
Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation Studios, dir. Unkrich & Molina; 9-
