Up!

Post #5

In the spirit of The Academy Awards, I recently watched Up I usually don’t bother watching Disney movies unless I am with a little kid or one of my friends wants to watch it. I have nostalgia for Disney but usually I would rather watch a film that doesn’t include talking animals. However, I kept hearing great things about Up so I thought why not give it a try.

The first thing I was struck by in Up was how quickly I found I cared about the characters. The movie begins with a five-minute montage of the old man, Carl, and his wife, Ellie’s, life together. I find that usually montages in any film, live action or animation, are not necessarily very effective. Montages often can come off across as cheesy cliché summary. In Up I found it to be tremendously affective. I was able to instantly see the love between these two characters. They highlighted upon all the right moments like something as simple as fixing up a house, cloud watching, having dreams like the wife’s South American adventure, and losing dreams like not being able to have a child.

One of the things I felt was so affective about the montage was the use of recurring images. The most obvious is the use of the balloons. Carl as a young boy loses his balloon, Ellie returns it to him, Carl sells balloons, and later when Ellie is in the hospital Carl sends a balloon in the same way Ellie did for him. Later in the film Carl flies his house away using tons of balloon. They also used other images to go along with the theme of “up” like clouds in the sky and going up a hill.

Another interesting thing about the montage is was entirely non-diagetic sound. The only sound was the beautiful score. It fit so well and carried the mood perfectly. All of these things sucked you into this world so much that you almost believed if you had enough balloons you really could carry your house away. I think what made the montage in Up work so well is that every image, sound, and note counted and meant something.