Up's Money Shot (and why The Artist sucks)

At their core, movies are a string of images connected together to create meaning. The dialogue, acting, special effects, and music that normally accompany them are simply evolutions of this basic concept. At its inception (mostly out of necessity), film had no sound and existed in this primitive state. As technology developed, the medium began to evolve, but the most powerful films still remain largely visual. It’s this reason why I’m always preaching things like “show, don’t tell” on this blog. The power of the image is what movies are about.

I start with all of this nonsense that you already know because I’ve recently seen 2011’s critical darling and Oscar frontrunner, The Artist. Michel Hazanavicius’ silent film about the transition from silent movies to “talkies” is being praised for harkening back to film’s early days and serving as a way to remind modern audiences just how wonderful and awe-inspiring movies can be. Now, you might think all that sounds silly (and you’d be right – it does), but I urge you to check out some of the reviews of the film. Critics are going ape shit. In an effort to avoid turning this post into a scathing critique of The Artist, I’ll just quickly point out why the film is a fraud and move on to the as-promised-by-the-title discussion of Up.

Silent films are so wonderful because, more than any other kind of film, they rely on visuals to tell the story. Every great silent film is great because of how it presents its images in relation to one another. Hazanavicius’ film doesn’t really do this. The movie seems content to simply have scenes where two people are having a conversation, and then inset a title card to let the audience know what was said. That just isn’t very interesting visually. Given that the movie itself has no ambitions other than to show audiences of today what the silent films of yesterday looked like, this doesn’t really make a lot of sense. The film is nothing more than an attempt at mimicry, and it fails in that regard. Not only does the movie fail at what it’s trying to accomplish, but the goal is ridiculous as a concept. There’s nothing valuable about preserving the past for the sake of preserving the past. There should be a reason aside from just showing the people of today what existed way back when. And then, there’s this: Why do we need a 2011 movie that shows us what the silent movies of the 1910s and 20s were like? A good deal of those movies still exist! Just watch them! If people don’t search them out, then we should accept that tastes have changed along with technology and not force said older technology onto a public that clearly doesn’t care. In other words, stop telling people what they should like. Let them make that decision.

I start with this little (ok, much too long) rant because Pixar’s Up (2009) achieves in a little under five minutes what The Artist took 100 minutes to try and fail at miserably. And with that, here’s the clip:



Hopefully your eyes aren’t too blurry to continue reading. If they are, feel free to pause here and get a Kleenex. If it makes you feel any better, I had to watch the clip 3 times (in addition to all the times I’ve seen the movie itself) before I could even begin writing this. Now that I’ve officially outed myself as a softie in an effort to make you feel better about (possibly) also being a softie, we should probably get to it.

The title of this scene in the film (and the song accompanying it) is Married Life. It’s a fitting title – nice and simple, like the scene itself. However, it’s that simplicity that gives the scene such heft. The film takes easily recognizable images and associates them with common ideas in order to create meaning. For example, when we see a car tire blow out, followed by Carl and Ellie breaking their savings jar, we know they’ve gone into their savings to pay for the repair. By placing those images against one another, the film creates meaning. The scene is able to capture an entire life this way. It’s a concise and affecting sequence and a perfect use of the techniques of silent film, largely due to this juxtaposition of images.

The scene’s practical purpose is two fold: 1) it serves as exposition for the audience, and 2) it invests the audience in Carl’s character and relationship with Ellie. Since the majority of the film follows Carl’s life after his wife’s death, doing both of those things are essential to the film being successful. These goals sound easy enough to attain, but good exposition is few and far between in the movie world. Voiceover narration that plainly and blandly tells the audience everything they need to know is a common tactic. That sucks. As always, show, don’t tell. The reason this particular example succeeds is because it does just that. The fact that it’s basically a short silent film all to itself makes me get all Film Geek Nerdy, but it works within the larger context of the film beautifully, as we’ll see when we break the scene down:

0:16 – 1:23: The sequence begins with a series of small vignettes that depict Carl and Ellie as newlyweds. We start by seeing Carl carry Ellie into their new home (the house they met in, incidentally). It’s a classic fixer-upper. We then see Ellie sawing a piece of wood and Carl hammering nails in a doorway, followed by a shot of the two sliding chairs underneath a window. Since the previous shot showed the condition of their house, we know that the two are making home improvements. Carl then accidentally leaves his handprint on the mailbox, and Ellie does the same to make him feel better as the two share a laugh. This first vignette ends by showing the finished house, which looks exactly like their childhood drawing. Their life together has started, the couple clearly cares for each other, and they’re happy.

The second vignette begins as Ellie runs to the top of the hill, while Carl has to stop and catch his breath. The couple then shares a picnic and watches the clouds shape as Ellie educates Carl on animals and shows off her imagination. This vignette ends with the camera panning from Ellie’s explanation to Carl’s smiling face. This is important because it forces the viewer to see things from Carl’s point of view. The remainder of the film is about Carl dealing with the loss of Ellie, so it’s essential for the audience to see things through his eyes. Once again, these two are enjoying a happy life together.

Next, we’re treated to two short vignettes that show the couple at work and at leisure. First, Carl is the balloon man at the zoo, while Ellie’s outfit and bird tell us she works with the animals. Second, the couple holds hands as they each read a book in the chairs we saw earlier. Again, we know they’re in their house since we previously saw them place those chairs in that exact spot.

At the 1:02 mark, the couple is having another picnic (again, since we’ve previously seen...ok, you get the idea by now). Instead of an animal in the sky, Carl sees a baby. Ellie then sees lots of babies. Carl’s smile is all we need to indicate that the couple is going to try to have a child together.

What this first minute or so of the sequence has accomplished is quite impressive. Each small vignette has a specific purpose (whether it be home, work, family, leisure time, etc.) – they take broad ideas commonly associated with a young marriage and place them together to paint Carl and Ellie’s picture. This linking of separate small scenes is basically how film, as a storytelling device, came to be. It’s more pronounced in silent films because there isn’t a whole lot to focus on other than the visuals, but these sorts of tactics are still the building blocks of all movies. These five short sequences, when shown together, show the audience a healthy, happy new marriage.

1:23 – 1:35: The couple is turning a room into a nursery for the new baby. The camera pans to the right and shows the couple talking to a doctor and Ellie burying her hands in her face. We realize that a baby isn’t coming. The use of color and music are vital in this vignette. The colors in the nursery are bright, vibrant, and, most importantly, lively. The colors in the doctor’s office are dark, drab, and indicative of death. The music throughout the clip has been upbeat and happy. As the couple is working on the nursery, the music begins that same way. But, after only four notes, the tone turns melancholy to mirror what we’re seeing onscreen. Both the use of color and music within this vignette are very simple forms of contrast that both work incredibly well. As a viewer, you just get it, without any real thought on the matter.

1:35 – 2:03: Carl looks at Ellie from a distance (shown again from his POV). He goes to her, gives her the adventure book, and smiles. The couple paints a picture of their house on a cliff, and then we see a coin placed in a jar marked “Paradise Falls”. The two then each cross their heart with a hand raised. We realize that the two still plan to live for each other and follow their dreams. Despite being unable to have a child, their bond is reinforced.

2:03 – 2:43: At this point, the film uses a series of mini-montages to pass time. We see Carl and Ellie filling their savings jar. We see various unexpected things go wrong (a blown out tire, a broken leg, a tree falling onto their house) and the two breaking their savings jar each time. We see Ellie straightening Carl’s tie before work each morning, which then turns into a second mini-montage. After the tie montage, we see the couple again. They are elderly, but they kiss and laugh and still seem just as in love. These series of montages, along with the vignette about losing the baby, serve to show the audience a middle aged couple focusing on their careers and going through the ups and downs of life. The stroke of genius is that through the savings jar and tie montages, the movie has condensed 40 years into 40 seconds without losing any emotion. The use of montage here is also important, as it tells the audience that these ups and downs are essentially what life is.

2:43 – 3:04: Now as an elderly couple, we see that Carl and Ellie aren’t too terribly different. They’re still doing things we’ve previously seen them doing (working, cleaning the house, and having fun together). The film repeats some of the images from earlier in the scene in order to show us the couple is still as happy as they’ve always been.

3:04 – 3:22: This is a pretty brilliant little sequence as Carl picks up a picture of Ellie as a child, looks at the painted picture of their house in Paradise Falls, and looks at the elderly, “real-life” Ellie. Carl’s disappointed reaction and subsequent idea connect the three images. If the couple wants to make good on the dreams of their youth, they should act now before it’s too late. He buys plane tickets, and plans a picnic to surprise Ellie.

3:22 – end of clip: As Carl rushes to the couple’s familiar picnic spot and prepares to spring the surprise on Ellie, the image mirrors a pleasant moment shown earlier where Ellie rushed up the hill and Carl lagged behind. The mood turns melancholy as we see Ellie fall to her knees and Carl rush to her side. The message is clear – no matter how hard Carl tries to recapture the dreams of their youth, it can’t happen. At the 3:30 mark a dissolve to transition into the next scene. Up until this moment, the entire sequence has been a series of individually constructed shots placed next to each other which make up small vignettes. These vignettes have also been placed next to one another to create another, broader layer of meaning. Each shot ended with a cut before showing the next image. Here, when Ellie falls and Carl runs to her, the image bleeds into the first image of the next scene (or dissolves into it, hence the term). Dissolves are used for a variety of reasons, and here it’s used to visually and thematically link the final few images of the montage. The rest of the film is going to deal with Carl’s difficulty moving on with his life without Ellie, and by bleeding these final images into one another, the film begins to show that visually. Carl can’t let go of these memories, so the film, being told from his perspective, doesn’t want to either. It’s an excellent example of film technique used to say something a little more substantial.

After the dissolve, we see Ellie reading a book while lying in a hospital bed as a balloon floats towards her. The balloons throughout the scene are important because they, along with the house, later become a symbol for Carl’s inability to truly let Ellie go as well as a symbol of unfulfilled childhood dreams. The fact that the montage takes the time to set that up by having them in their lives throughout the entire scene is pretty great. This sequence once again uses music to create mood. The music is simple throughout the scene, employing different takes on the same structure in order to convey emotion. Once Ellie gives Carl their adventure book, the couple holds hands as Carl kisses Ellie on her forehead. The image speaks for itself – this is their goodbye.

Another dissolve is used at the 4:00 mark as we see Carl sitting alone with the blue balloon in a funeral home, presumably after Ellie’s funeral. At the 4:07 mark, a final dissolve is used and we see Carl, again with the balloon, walking alone into their home. At 4:20, we fade to black and the scene ends.

In just over four minutes we see comedy, tragedy, and everything in between. Simply put, it’s a life lived. The film uses the power of the image to show this and marries it seamlessly with technique. As far as homages to silent films go, you can’t really find a better example of what makes them so great. You also can’t really find another film today that uses these techniques and this kind of homage for a distinct and real purpose other than to just do it. The sequence wouldn’t be so concise and affecting without the use of these techniques, and it makes the rest of the film that much richer.