Breaking Down: Up
 

The comments thread for Breaking Down: Up.

Didn't have a good place to put this in the essay itself, but here's a word cloud for it (all ~7,000 words):

https://www.movieforums.com/images/e...loud-house.png

Re: Breaking Down: Up
 

I like your minutes style and a deeply personal touch to it. It's too bad I don't watch animation movies and my knowledge don't go beyond Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Tom and Jerry.

Re: Breaking Down: Up
 

UP was my #1 film for 2009

And with good reason. I remember getting teary eyed at two sequences, the beginning of course and the second is when he finally discovers the second half of the book is filled with photos.

Emotional, gorgeous, funny. This film has it all. How many movies can claim they had the entire audience crying within the first ten minutes???

What a perfect quote to end your essay Chris, sums up the film to perfection. I love Up, it's such a layered film and can be enjoyed by all ages. Really enjoyed reading the essay :)

Re: Breaking Down: Up
 

Wow. Amazing piece of work this essay. Thanks. I don't generally dig animated movies but UP is easily in my top 3.

If I get a bit more time I'll try and read it in depth more as it's alot to take in.

Re: Breaking Down: Up
 

Loved the essay. I welled up just reading it. Might need to throw it in this weekend. That Lewis quote! No one writes about the human condition more poignantly and poetically.

Thanks, sean. Means a lot. I welled up a lot writing it. Certain parts get me even re-reading or editing them for literally the 50th time.

Very true. And the quote itself? Specifically mentions love, hiding yourself from the world, how it affects your heart ("cross your heart"), and even animals. It's probably a stretch to think this was Docter's touchstone while writing the film, but he's a fan of Lewis, and if it was what he had in mind the film wouldn't have looked very different than what we got.

Why not?

I don't think it is much of a stretch at all. How far into writing this or watching the movie did the quote occur to you?

I am going to get personal for a minute. This part of the quote right here, "Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries". Boy oh boy, he couuld have added the name Sean at the end of that. That's me since my divorce. Ugh, makes me sick that I am allowing myself to do that. I have my boys, of course, and I throw myself into them. There is no vulnerability in that though. Sorry for the rant Mofo but everyone go out and watch Up and read more Lewis immediately.

Great stuff Yoda.

Boy, I'm not even sure. I guess that's what comes of writing something for so long. It definitely wasn't right away, though, or at the very end. I'm fairly confident the majority of the essay had been written already, though.

It was quite awhile before I realized just how close our first viewing of the film was to the proposal, too. That's one of the reasons this whole thing dragged on: parallels, both narratively and personally, just kept revealing themselves.

Big of you to share that, Sean. I think this is a common thing that happens to all of us at least somewhat. And I think it's perfectly okay and healthy to some degree after some kind of emotional tumult or trauma. But it's easier than ever to lose ourselves in those things, too. Best compromise I can muster, myself, is to enjoy all those little hobbies and things, but to lean hard towards the ones that can be enjoyed with people you care about. Then, the hobbies and luxuries aren't distractions, but simply more material to build those relationships, well, up.

i guess it never occur to me to care much about animated characters. I prefer to watch real actors, actresses, to see how express emotions, ow they live the character, how they make mistake, how they act etc. I was trying to watch some animation like Ice Age or Shrek but I was not not fully satisfied however hard artists tried. It missed a soul. Someone recommended me to watch some Japanese anime to give it another try so I might to give another chance to animation:)

Re: Breaking Down: Up
 

I can dig that (about animation), but with Pixar (and Up, in particular) we're seeing films that aren't nearly as goofy or relatively unserious as the Shreks of the world. I mean, the main character is an 80-year-old man, for crying out loud. It's about real stuff.

Glad to see you got it up :up:

Will have to read it later, at the latest tomorrow as it's pretty lengthy and i've not got the time right now. Looking forward to it.

Re: Breaking Down: Up
 

Ah, excellent. As usual, I have around zero minutes to read while I am at work, but I will make sure to check this out as soon as I have a bit of time. looking forward to it!

Re: Breaking Down: Up
 

I might not have liked "Up" as much as you did (I thought the first 15 minutes were perfect, and everything after that was just okay), but reading your essay makes me want to re-watch it again. Great stuff.

Re: Breaking Down: Up
 

I want to watch it so I can read the essay

Yoda's writing vs not loving the movie when I saw it, what will win?



Also I liked the personal touch at the start about the film's proximity to your momentum toward marriage. Just imagine, if you had waited to go to the movies until the next day, The Proposal would have been in theaters you could have a very different engagement, one with actually heartfelt reception music.

This, in particular, is really nice to hear, because this is exactly what I was going for. Pretty much everyone agrees the beginning is amazing, but I've heard so many people (who have great taste in films) say that the second half is a big step down. And I don't even blame them, because most of what makes it good isn't obvious with the first viewing. So one of my primary goals was to try to show how much that second half is paying off all the symbolism and recurring motifs established earlier.

Thanks; I appreciate that. And if someone (you, or anyone else) does decide to watch it again after having read it, I'd be curious to know what that's like. But just getting some people to think "hey, maybe there's more going on here" is plenty satisfying.

I mean, it'd be kind of weird to play that at the reception when she'd already walked down the aisle to it. That's just not done.

(But seriously, that joke gets a , bumped to a for actually finding a film release that fit the date.)