When I'm Up All Night

Saturday, March 5, 2011

SURPRISINGLY, the animated Walt Disney-Pixar flick Up had made me do some profound thinking since I first watched it. I have seen it for quite a number of times because first, it is a funny movie; second, the cartoonists did a splendid job creating and giving life to the characters; third, the plot is exciting and unpredictable; and fourth, messages that are all innocuously disguised as kid stuff are actually timeless and close to my heart.

Loving couple Carl and Ellie Fredricksen were childhood playmates. Ellie's outgoing, adventurous, can-do spirit was the perfect foil to Carl's subdued, square character. ("You know, you don't talk very much. I like you.") He is so square and so is his body. He has a square face, and heavyset build.

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He lives in a drab narrow house which used to be a dilapidated old house he and Ellie used as a hideout for their childhood adventures. He is shown later on to be a widower and lives in a drab narrow house which he and Ellie fixed up when they were newlyweds. He didn't seem to have a lot of friends and in old age was crabby and gruff and had a narrow limited view of the world...

...until Russel the eager beaver of a boy scout came along. Russel is fat, very round and earnest as young children untainted yet by the sophistication of the world are. When Carl is deemed a public menace after hitting a construction worker for wrecking his mailbox, he is told to leave his house for an old folks' home.

The day comes and the attendants pick him up. He tricks them into allowing him time to say goodbye to his abode but actually had prepared to fly away house and all. How? By letting out thousands of balloons through the chimney which were to carry him to Paradise Falls.

Paradise Falls is a fictional majestic waterfall in South America. ("It's like America but south," little Ellie explains.) It was Carl's and Ellie's dream to visit it someday ever since Little Ellie showed playmate Carl a picture of it in her scrapbook "Mon Livre d'Aventure."

As Carl and Russel land in unfamiliar South American soil, they meet Dug - a dog that could talk via a translating collar. Dug is just one of the many talking dogs trained by Carl and Ellie's childhood idol, the disgraced explorer Charles Muntz. Carl and Russel also meet a rare, gigantic brightly plumed bird Russel names Kevin. Russel loves animals as much as Carl detests them. Yet these two creatures would later be the humans' comfort and friends.

Muntz actually seeks to capture Kevin to bring back to America in order to prove that the skeletal remains he displayed decades ago was not a hoax. The excitement builds up at this point as Carl and Russel help Kevin escape Muntz's evil clutches. Kevin turns out to be a she separated from her chicks.

The movie has a very happy ending. Kevin is rescued from Muntz. Muntz had fallen to his death. Russel adopts Carl as a surrogate grandfather. Dug and the other dogs get to experience real productive lives with normal people.

The turning point in the film is when a dejected Carl wracked with guilt for choosing to save his house instead of Kevin, chances upon Ellie's Livre d'Aventure. In one of the pages is scrawled underneath a photo of an older Ellie is a note that says "Merci pour cette belle aventure - il est temps pour toi d'en vivre une nouvelle! Je t'aime, Ellie." (Thank you for this beautiful adventure - it is time for you to live a new one. I love you, Ellie.)

With this realization, Carl pushes out the heavy furniture of the house, and throws away most of the things he lovingly collected with Ellie through the years. This lightens the house and it gets lifted up in the air by the remaining balloons. Carl is able to help Russel and Dug rescue Kevin.

If I come to think of it, my life on earth is really tenuous and so are the highs and lows, riches and poverty, peaks and valleys, good health and illness, family ties and friendships, pain and pleasure.

We'll never know what will happen next and that is part of this big exciting adventure called life. Muntz taught me that greed and self-aggrandisement do not pay. Russel's childlike innocence and love for animals can be something to emulate even in old age.

Young Ellie's invincible spirit and Old Carl's change of heart have told me that it is never too early to be different and never too late to change. Now, when I am burdened by something, I think of Carl getting rid of the heavy things that weighed down his house. That's what I should be doing. Get rid of the heavy stuff that weigh my mind and life down, and live with the basics that are actually all that I need. Pets allowed.