“Light” doesn’t necessarily mean simple and disengaged, but something is still missing.
– On June 21, the latest animated film by Pixar was released in cinemas throughout Italy: “Elemental”. The story is set in Element City, a metropolis that closely resembles those of the United States, where inhabitants who personify four fundamental elements coexist peacefully (more or less): Fire, Water, Earth and Air. The protagonist is a girl-fire named Ember, daughter of immigrants from Tierra del Fuegoan area whose traditions and the austerity of the inhabitants refer (very little) covertly to Japan, moved to start a new life after an episode that is told in the course of the film. The girl, whose age is not revealed but appears to be in her twenties, is raised with the aim of taking over her father’s shop once he retires but, as John Lennon said, “life is what happens to you when you are intent on making other plans” and to this she is no exception;
– The themes covered by the film are the most varied, starting from that of inclusion which is tackled from all points of view: first of all the purely racial one, with the flames forced to defend themselves from the much “hated” water, but without realizing that they in turn represent a danger to the earth, up to that of gender, with the first non-binary character in Disney history, Lake Ripplea young artist who speaks of himself using the pronoun “their”, belonging to the family of Wade, waterman and co-star of the Pixar play. It will be precisely the physical and character contrast of the latter with Ember to act as a leitmotif for the whole plot, which will bring two elements that seem untouchable to each other like water and fire;
– The real problem of “Elemental”, on balance, could be precisely that of having tried to address so many topics, all interesting, without delving into even one of them, but only touching them, almost wanting to give a basic smattering of all, without the courage to sink. A choice dictated, in all likelihood, by the idea of addressing a less engaged and younger audience, but which in fact it renders the work as a kind of unfinished, suitable for everyone, but perfect for no one, like a kind of “Jack of all trades, masters of none” in film version. This is probably why the response from the box office was also lukewarm, coming over time to cover the costs of production and avoid the actual “flop”, but without the change of gear that would have decreed its economic success;
– From a visual point of view, “Elemental” does not betray the viewer, nor the great Pixar tradition, with a style that has forced the US house to rely once again on new technologies to transform the graphic idea matured in the heads into reality of the authors. If animating a toy had been a great challenge in the middle of the nineties, it was just as much to give life to elements such as fire and water, to find the right balance between expressiveness and reality, without making them too scary or similar to demons or ghosts. In this case it was the AI that went to meet the animators, as told by Paul Kanyuk, Pixar’s technical supervisor, who with the collaboration of the Disney Research Studios team used the Neural Style Transfer (NST) for the creation of the character of Amber, who served as a “locomotive” for all the others and opened new paths for the animation of the future;
– To define “Elemental” with a quote, to comment on what has been written so far, you can use the classic “good, but not very well”. Pixar’s latest effort will never be remembered as a masterpiece by the animation studio that has accustomed us to real revolutions such as Toy Story or Wall-E, but it fits perfectly into a vein already recently experimented with ” Red” and “Luca”, but before that with “Inside Out”, where the viewer is led to address social and introspection themes, in this specific case dedicated above all to pre-adolescentsbut already understandable to younger children and, why not, useful to some parents who need a little “refreshment” on concepts such as integration and acceptance, still much less rooted in society than they should be.
The article Scattered considerations on “Elemental” (Pixar) comes from Sportellate.it.