Out of Her Element
Disney/Pixar
MOVIE REVIEW
Elemental (2023)
Possibly the greatest piece of recent cultural criticism was the tweet which said all Pixar movies are about whether something has feelings. Cars, toys, fish, robots, planes, rats, feelings themselves. In “Elemental,” the newest Pixar/Disney movie and the closing film of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, this concept is taken one further. What if the basic elements of life (air, fire, water and earth) had feelings, and furthermore what if some of those feelings were racist? This is quite an extrapolation for a kids' movie, especially one that overlooks the fact that kids having parents of different races is not remotely unusual anymore. Some really stunning visuals, a refreshing attitude to gender roles, and the first explicitly gay women in a Disney movie go some way to make up for this throwback of a concept, but it's unfortunately not enough to make the movie any good.
This extends to Pixar's general problem with its mother characters. Ember's (voiced by Leah Lewis) mother Cinder (voiced by Shila Ommi) is right there the whole time but Ember is a daddy's girl, maybe because Bernie’s (voiced by Ronnie Del Carmen) health isn't the greatest. The parents immigrated to Element City when Cinder was pregnant with Ember, leaving behind their Asian-coded home country for a better life in a city that segregated them into a separate, water-free area. The Lumen family runs a shop selling old-country items for an entirely fire-based clientele, but Ember hates the work. She feels crushed by the sacrifices her parents made to bring her to Element City and thinks she can only repay them by sacrificing her own dreams of a life outside of the shop. Until she meets water-person Wade (voiced by Mamoudou Athie), that is.
Wade is coded as a child of wealth and privilege but on paper he is the most perfect love interest in cinematic history. He lives with his family in a skyscraper, has a good job as a city inspector and is so in tune with his emotions he cries at the drop of a hat. Family-focused, solvent and emotionally aware would get him very far on the dating apps in this town! What’s more, despite his good working relationship with his female manager, air-person Gale (voiced by Wendi McLendon-Covey), Wade is willing to jeopardize his career by retracting the code violations he finds in the Lumens’ shop because Ember asks him to. As they bicker their way through city hall bureaucracy (and isn't that a plot designed to capture little minds), Ember starts to realize that the world is bigger than she thought. There are multiple flashbacks sequences of bigotry the Lumens experienced when Ember was a child, and with Wade’s encouragement she starts to wonder if Bernie and Cinder’s resignation in the face of that was the best way to handle this.
The only reason this plot point is not howlingly sexist is because Mr. Athie’s charm ensures Wade comes across as a selfless boyfriend instead of a troublesome control freak. The sequence where he and Gale build a special air bubble so Ember can see a rare flower in a flooded museum is so gorgeous, and so romantic, that much is forgiven. The animation has clearly been heavily influenced by the Spiderverse, with combinations of animation styles layered to give a real-life jumbled effect to the cartoon city that’s both gorgeous and clever. The elevated subways essentially being log flumes requiring umbrellas to walk under are pretty cute. But is the entire idea of a strictly segregated city one to promote to today's teenies? And how is it that Ember and Wade appear to be the first ever mixed-substance boyfriend and girlfriend? Water and fire might accidentally kill each other, goes the reasoning, but has no one else in Element City ever been PG-level horny before?
Director Peter Sohn, who has done voice work in several Pixar movies himself, has made it plain this is a deeply personal story; and it's good to see a major studio investing millions into a passion project that attempts to show something new. But it's a shame that the three credited writers didn't have the moxie to update the concept to better appeal to kids today. The focus on Ember’s relationship with Bernie to the exclusion of her relationship with Cinder, up to and including the big finale, is so boring, too.
Yet boring becomes problematic when we consider how Wade's mother Brook (Catherine O'Hara weaponizing her Moira Rose experience) has a full personality despite much less screen time. What’s even worse is when Brook introduces Ember to Wade's sister Lake and her girlfriend Ghibli, it's done in passing; neither of the lesbians really speak. Some representation is better than nothing, but a throwaway line that can be removed for homophobic international markets is not exactly a praiseworthy achievement. It’s so depressing to watch a kids’ movie that leaves you irritated instead of happy, but unfortunately, despite all its visual splendor that’s exactly what “Elemental” does. The elements of a much better movie were all right within the filmmakers’ grasp, but unfortunately that required a feeling for fitting them together that they just didn’t have.
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