Simplexity

Last night I watched the film Up, in 3-D. I had heard it was "worth seeing in 3-D" particularly because of the animation. I had also heard that this was not a typical Disney/Pixar film; in fact, it left many people in tears. So, a little hesitant, I went to see what all the fuss was about.

While watching the film I was struck by the depth of the characters, and particularly by Disney/Pixar's ability to create a complex character to which the audience could easily relate... without the character speaking more than four sentences in the entire film. Within the first five minutes of the film, you could have asked me to write a story continuing the lives of any of the characters, and I would have happily done so, both because I was attached to the characters, and because I felt I knew their personalities well enough to accomplish such a task. You might even have been able to interest me in math or science - which have never been my personal strong points, by utilizing these characters.

What connected me to them?

This morning I read a few articles on the history and making of Up. The design was based primarily off of Al Hirschfeld's caricatures; the artists termed their new design style "Simplexity," creating complex characters out of the simplest possible combination of lines. A square, stuck-in-the-mud character is square. A rolling, mobile personality is round. How easy to relate to! How immediately clear who these characters are.

Still, a simplex character could get boring halfway through a film, when the audience feels they know everything there is to know about the character. What brought me back to them time and again? What gave me the feeling that I wanted to continue learning about these characters and with these characters? It was the music.

In the first five minutes of the film, the theme was clearly established. This theme slowed almost to a stop at the saddest moments, and picked up merrily in times of excitement. An otherwise empty action scene became heroic when the theme (connecting me back to those first five emotional minutes) clicked in, and an otherwise slow and overly and depressing scene became instead nostalgic and heartwarming when the same theme returned at a different tempo. I'm very used to hearing a variety of themes and leitmotifs connected to different characters without a film, but this use of one theme to convey the recurring thoughts of the main character and infer the presence of another character was astonishingly effective.

All in all, two hours of viewing left me with much food for thought.

For more information on Up, check out Pixar's site and you can also visit Hirschfeld's site.