Wow am I behind on blogging! Since my post in May I’ve been to a wedding on the west coast and I’ve spent two weeks with Kara touring central Europe. But in that time I’ve also seen a bunch of movies. So I’ll be blogging here more regularly now that all the summer travel is over (for now).
One of my favorite movies of the summer has been Pixar’s latest film – UP. As usual Pixar fills the screen with eye candy. Every frame of UP is visually breathtaking. But what has always separated Pixar films from the rest is the excellent storytelling. Toy Story, Monsters Inc., and Finding Nemo weren’t successful just because the computer animation was awesome. It’s because the stories were so compelling. The same is true for UP. In fact, UP, might be among the best stories in an animated feature in my lifetime. Sorry, Little Mermaid.
[spoilers ahead]
While remaining accessible, UP also manages to plum the depths of the emotional story of an elderly man. Usually relegated to background characters or simple clichés, the elderly are rarely taken seriously on their own terms in big Hollywood movies and that goes double for big Hollywood kids movies. Not so with UP. The main character in UP is the grumpy old Carl Fredricksen. But we meet Carl as a young boy and via tastefully done montage see Carl’s life from boyhood to present. It is a touching narrative of the love Carl had for Ellie, his wife of many years. So by the time we first see Carl, hunched over his cane, squinting out at the world from underneath bushy white eyebrows we’ve already experienced the happiest and saddest years of his life with him. He’s not just some old man. He’s Carl, he’s alone and he still misses Ellie.
Carl has also stuck it out in the house he and Ellie lived together in for years and years, while the neighborhood urbanizes all around him. (This kinda made me think of Walt Kowalski from Gran Torino). After getting angry at a contractor building a sky-rise next door Carl is going to be hauled off to the nursing home. Instead of complying, Carl takes the opportunity to leave behind a world that has passed him by and strike out on the adventure he and Ellie had always planned on taking. When the nursing home attendants come knocking Carl gleefully releases the thousands of balloons that lift his home from it’s urban domain and take to the air.
It’s when the silence and serenity of floating at several thousand feet is interrupted by a knock on the door that Carl’s real adventure begins. A young “Wilderness Scout” named Russel has been stuck on the porch of Carl’s house since lift-off. Russel had come by the day before asking how he could help Carl. He just needed his “helping the elderly” badge and had dropped by to see if he could be of help when he became the unintentional stow-away on Carl’s flying house.
Inter-generational relationships are important. One of the healthiest things for a young kid to have in their life is to have significant relationships with older people. This is an area in youth ministry that has been lacking in recent decades but is making a big come-back. In our youth ministry we intentionally help build relationships between middle school students and older folks in our church. Unlike many churches we seek out older folks to be youth shepherds and sprinkle in a few younger adults, rather than the other way around.
The relationship that develops between Carl and Russel through their adventures in the far-away jungle makes for a great story. One that made me apprecaite churches that create space for kids and older folks to build relationships together. Oh, and Dug was fun too.
