Inside Out
Riley is eleven. She is moving from Minnesota to San Francisco with her parents. Inside Out is her story and the emotions that the eleven year old experiences as she leaves behind her friends and familiar world. Moving a house is high on the list of events that cause stress according to research by Hungarian endocrinologist Hans Selye, the pioneer of modern day stress research.
The move to the new city triggers five emotions in turn in Riley’s head: Joy, Disgust, Fear, Anger and Sadness.
She experiences all of them as she navigates the new city, new house and new school.
Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios had said recently to Fortune magazine that“With every one of our films we try to touch emotions, but we don’t try to touch the same emotions each time.”
With Inside Out, five major emotions now seem to be out of bound for Pixar. I will always think of Anger the way he has been depicted in this film.
Disney over the years and then Pixar have consistently showed through their brilliantly crafted films what it means to make anything anthropomorphic. Teapots, cars, table lamps and everything else in the world from animals to inanimate objects have all got human characteristics. They have tried to change our stereotypes by making us see the beauty in Monsters and making us fall in love with them.
Former Pixar artist Emma Coats made a list of 22 Rules of Storytelling that went viral. This time they have created a new benchmark by making emotions anthropomorphic.
The brilliant Amy Poehler gives us the voice Joy, Mindy Kaling plays Disgust, Bill Hader enacts Fear, Lewis Black’s voice depicts Riley’s Anger and Phyllis Smith as Sadness create a dashboard of the emotions that are each trying to take center stage as Riley handles her world.
Inside Out tells us how the emotions inside our head shape how we behave with the outside world. How the emotions color our memories. Joy is Riley’s dominant emotion but Inside Out is really all about coming to terms with and acknowledging Sadness. The emotions shape her perceptions, create long term memories and even trigger her moral judgment. Anger often makes us especially sensitive to injustice and we try to address that.
Embracing Sadness
I love the depictions of the characters. Anger is all red and ready to pick a fight at the slightest provocation, Fear is a skinny dark thing who always ready to run away (fight or flight) while Disgust is green (in my mind green is associated with Jealousy but then I am not in Pixar). The one that steals the show is Sadness with the melancholic tone sometimes bordering on annoying sometimes dragging down the pace of the film. Anything that Sadness touches turns blue. Interestingly Joy is shown to have the same blue colored hair as sadness and the green dress that Joy wears has some shades of Disgust. Maybe but the depiction is bang on. Sadness and Joy are deeply intertwined is a key message of the film.
The story in between where Joy and Sadness are trying to find their way back (no, this is not a spoiler) got long winded and tedious. And some of the jargon used in Psychology remained just that. And by the way, what was the opening short about a volcano all about?
Overall: The film will let you understand how your emotions have colored your memories and behavior.
For a children’s animation film, that’s an ambitious achievement. Go see it.----------