Suffice it to say
Inside Out is unlike anything Pixar has ever attempted before - eye-popping and
funny and heartfelt, yes, but clearly conceived as a metaphor for the way our
emotions sometimes get the better of us... and how our children learn to cope
with those emotions during their formative years, much to the chagrin of their
parents. It's an idea rife with dramatic possibilities, which director Pete
Docter (Up) and co-screenwriters Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley are consistently
able to mine for comedy and visual gold. (I haven't even begun to describe
Riley's "Personality Islands," or the color-coded translucent orbs in
which her memories are "stored" and then carted off to Long Term
Memory when she sleeps, or Bing Bong, or the stopovers in Imagination Land or -
my personal favorite - Abstract Thought, where the characters are rendered as
cubist shapes that would make Picasso proud.)
And yet, prior to
its release, a portion of the moviegoing public seemed genuinely confused as to
what the movie was actually about. That's partially the fault of the marketing,
which accentuated all the slapstick-y bits and silly character voices but none
of the nuance or emotional underpinnings that make up the meat of the movie.
(Audiences would be wise to remember that the people at Pixar always have their
best interests at heart. Unless it's a movie populated by talking cars, that
is.) Then there's the matter of the movie being so difficult to categorize -
neither science-fiction nor fantasy, though parts of it certainly lend
themselves to that interpretation, with ideas firmly rooted in neuroscience.
(Pay particular attention to the maze-like shelves of Riley's Long Term Memory,
which closely resemble the wrinkles and folds of the brain.)
Another reason for
the initial pushback against the film: audiences don't usually think in
metaphors. We like our movies straight up and to the point, thank you very
much, with nothing to distract us from the action or the jokes or the plot. So
when something like Inside Out comes along, it's easy to scoff and say the
story makes no sense, when in fact it's our brains struggling to rationalize it
both emotionally and intellectually at once. (For the record, the film isn't
saying our emotions are actually sentient beings living inside our heads, but
is a visual representation of that, to make it more palatable for the kiddies.)
Of course, it doesn't hurt that Inside Out's surface-level pleasures are so
irresistible in their own right. And Disney/Pixar is hardly the first major
studio to pass a "message" off as "entertainment." Below,
some sterling examples of movies as metaphors - big themes and big ideas boxed
up in consummately-wrapped packages. As the saying goes, these films are not
"about" what they're actually "about." Here, however, we'll
attempt to decipher what sort of high-minded concepts the filmmakers had in
mind.
__________
What It's "About": A prehistoric monster rises from the ocean
depths to terrorize the people of Japan.
What It's Actually About: Nuclear Holocaust
Explain Yourself, Mister: The Japanese answer to King Kong and The
Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, yes, is nothing more than a man in a rubber suit
stomping on miniature trains and buildings (and even looks like a sock puppet
in certain shots). But he's also the living, fire-breathing personification of
nuclear fallout, still fresh in the minds of audiences just nine years after
the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (The screenplay was also partly
inspired by the fate of the doomed fishing trawler Daigo Fukuryu Maru, about
which you can read about here.) Countless sequels, remakes, and rip-offs have
severely diluted the impact of the film, which, when watched today, is
shockingly somber and laser-focused on all the death and destruction Godzilla
leaves in its wake. And its final resolution - using H-bomb technology to
destroy something created by H-bombs - suggests an endless cycle of violence
we're only doomed to repeat. (Beware the 1956 Americanized version, with 40
minutes excised and footage of actor Raymond Burr awkwardly added in).
What It's "About": An idyllic seaside town finds itself under
siege from marauding killer birds.
What It's Actually About: Anti-feminism
Explain Yourself, Mister: Hitchcock's most abstract film can be
interpreted in so many different ways - an apocalyptic horror tale, a parable,
a dire warning against man's irresponsibility to the planet - but since one of
The Master's favorite obsessions was demeaning his leading ladies for the sake
of his "art" (see also Psycho, Marnie, Vertigo), we'll stick with
that one instead. The whole film, in fact, is about "birds" both in
the ornithological and colloquial sense, in which an overzealous, sexually
aggressive socialite (Tippi Hedren) inadvertently brings a whole host of
avian-based terror to a helpless town. There, she becomes embroiled in tensions
between a lawyer (Rod Taylor), his mother (Jessica Tandy), and ex-girlfriend
(Suzanne Pleshette), and there's literally a two-shot, late in the movie, of
Taylor being yanked through a window by squawking, pecking creatures as he
tries to board up his family home, only to be pulled back through the other
side by all the females in his life. Much is made, meanwhile, of the women's
constant attempts to take over roles typically filled by men - the aggressor,
the protector, the official checker-outer of strange noises in the attic. Is it
any wonder that it's only at the end, after Hedren's character has been
thoroughly violated, humiliated, and effectively silenced (put in her place,
really) when the birds inexplicably halt their attacks?
What It's "About": In Victorian-era Australia, schoolgirls
disappear during a rural picnic and are never heard from again.
What It's Actually About: Sexual Repression
Explain Yourself, Mister: Weir's gauzy, hypnotic masterpiece has alternately frustrated and fascinated audiences for decades now, though its
auditory and visual clues are clearly meant to raise questions, not to answer
them. Erotic early images of the girls going about their morning rituals
(bathing, dressing, tightening each other's corsets) are juxtaposed soon after
with phallic shots (lizards, jutting granite formations) of Hanging Rock itself
- and all on a sweltering St. Valentine's Day afternoon, as if awakening them
to sexual stirrings both intoxicating and dangerous. Three girls heed the call
and vanish into thin air, leaving behind them a trail of questions and not much
else. Were they murdered? Abducted by aliens? What of the teacher who also
disappeared that day, seen later wandering the cliffs in nothing but her
undergarments? And when one of the girls miraculously turns up days later, why
does she retain no memory of where she's been or the others have gone? The
movie never says, but hints at something far more sinister instead: that the
deeper we bury our innermost wants and desires, the closer we come to losing
ourselves to them.
What It's "About": A scientist's experiments in teleportation
take a horrific turn when his genes are swapped with that of a common housefly.
What It's Actually About: Body Decay/Disease
Explain Yourself, Mister: Oh, man, is this movie gross. Don't get me
wrong... I love it... but there are images here - a baboon with its guts turned
inside out, a man's hand and foot dissolved via "vomit drop," a woman
who gives birth to a maggot - that make repeat viewings kind of a slog.
Cronenberg has never been one to shy away from body horror or psychosexual deviance before (or after), but here, working with Oscar-winning makeup and
creature effects by the great Chris Walas (Gremlins, Enemy Mine), he reaches
new heights of gore and grotesquerie that have yet to be matched on the screen.
Beneath this story of a scientist (Jeff Goldblum) who gradually succumbs to the
molecular devastation that's ravaging his body, however, is the heartbreak of a
woman (Geena Davis) forced to stand idly by as the man she loves disintegrates
before her very eyes. It's a perfect metaphor for AIDS, or for cancer, or for
Alzheimer's, or for any degenerative disease, really, that slowly saps away our
humanity while our loved ones watch, helpless, from the sidelines.
What It's "About": A snarky TV weatherman is cursed to relive
the events of February 2nd over and over again.
What It's Actually About: Buddhism/Judaism/ Catholicism
Explain Yourself, Mister: And you thought it was just the story of a
self-centered jerk who learns to be a better person. Well, it's still about
that, but like our most enduring classics, Groundhog Day has evolved into
something richer with deeper meaning, especially for anyone looking for it.
Buddhist scholars, for example, see the film's endless loops as cycles of the
samsara, or "Wheel of Life" - birth, life, death, and rebirth. (This
would technically make Bill Murray the bodhisattva - one who achieves
Enlightenment but comes back to help others experience it as well.) Jewish
rabbis, meanwhile, view Murray's countless good deeds as mitzvahs - charitable
acts which bring him closer to God, rather than achieving Nirvana or
Enlightenment. Then there's the Catholic belief that Puxatawney, PA, is
actually Purgatory, where Murray is forced to relive the day's events until he
gets them "right" - as penance for some original sin. Ramis, for his
part, seemed characteristically amused by all the hubbub but took the movie's
secrets to his grave. Or perhaps he was too good a filmmaker (and comedian) to
take away our enjoyment of the film as anything other than a self-centered jerk
who learns to be a better person.
What It's "About": A disenchanted couple discover they are
secretly spies for rival government agencies.
What It's Actually About: The Sanctity of Marriage
Explain Yourself, Mister: Screenwriter Simon Kinberg originally penned
the film as his master's thesis at Columbia University, based on conversations
with his friends about how their couple's counseling sessions had turned combative and mercenary. Wouldn't it be fun, he thought, to watch a couple on
the downward slope of a relationship rekindle their love by beating each other
to a bloody pulp? But the problem here isn't that John and Jane have sunk into
a rut; it's that they simply aren't communicating about it in any meaningful
way - their double lives literally prevent them from doing so. And it's only
after they discover each other's "infidelities" that they reclaim
some of the spark that helped them fall for each other in the first place. They
bicker, they fight, and in the movie's centerpiece sequence, come to literal
blows over all the resentment that's been building between them over the years,
at which point they reveal themselves at their most open and vulnerable. Even
the characters' fateful, final decision to stick together at the end has an
unexpected emotional truth to it, as if telling us that, yes, separate they may be
strong, but as a unified front, they're indestructible.
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