Inside Out

Pixar Studios released their latest emotional journey at Cannes in mid May. A month and a half later, I saw Inside Out at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (a full month before the UK release date). Surrounding the notion that each person is led by a selection of primary emotions, Inside Out is the story of Riley and her emotions Joy, Anger, Fear, Disgust and Sadness. At 11 years old, Riley's family uproots and moves from Minnesota to San Fransisco and during this move her emotions begin to lose control. Sadness discovers she can alter memories and Joy panics that she's losing control of young Riley. As these two emotions clash, they are sucked out of their safe headquarters and find themselves lost in the cavernous long term memory section of Riley's brain.

The films message is clear throughout. It's not healthy to bottle up or conceal your feelings nor is it healthy to hide the stereotypically 'bad' emotions. Inside Out shows its audiences that sometimes allowing yourself to cry and be sad is better for your longterm happiness. In typical Pixar fashion, the film ends happily with all five emotions reunited in their headquarters and working together on each memory. An interesting, secondary, message that came across was the similarities and distinctions between people. The film delves into both of Riley's parents brains during their first family dinner in San Fransisco. Both brains have the same primary emotions as Riley but they are slightly different in their dynamics. For example, Riley's Mother had emotions with long hair and were led by Sadness (but not a destructive Sadness like the one in Riley's brain). Whereas, Riley's Father's emotions were led by Anger and had moustaches. This is one of the ways in which the film's visual design was outstanding. Each character was the same yet different. Clearly differentiated from each other yet they all were clearly connected. 

Speaking of the design... Wow. It seems like year after year, Pixar and Disney are producing better, more visually stunning work. I found myself particularly fascinated by the skin of each emotion. Almost like they were made of particles, their skin was not solid. Each particle looked soft and glistened like glitter. Especially against the stark darkness of the 'memory dump', Joy's skin was beautifully animated to stand out against the background. Another captivating aspect of the film's overall aesthetic was the use of colour. Obviously each emotion is assigned a colour that's commonly associated or the colour that is culturally appropriated to suggest a connection to a particular feeling. But outside of this, the mind landscape was filled with bright colours, colour blocking and shining balls symbolising individual memories. During the abstract thought scene, the use of colour and design was hilarious. Of course, made funnier by the running commentary from Sadness. 

I laughed out loud from beginning to end and teared up twice. Inside Out was beautiful and will likely be referred to in the future as 'classic' Pixar. Also, if you're not going to see this film at the cinema, have a look for Lava - Pixar's new short. A beautiful, musical short about a lonely volcano - it was such a wonderful way to start this film. It was probably my favourite pre-film short from Pixar since Day/Night.