Inside Out (5/5 Stars)

Imagine a movie that is at once wholly original and also completely familiar, startlingly simplistic in its scope yet containing multitudes of creativity and cavernous depths of emotion, and that can also make you laugh routinely, thrill you unexpectedly, and move you to near tears consistently. You would be describing Pixar’s newest feature “Inside Out,” a journey inside the mind of an 11-old-girl from Minnesota who has just moved to her new home in San Francisco. She endures a first day at a new school, a disappointing hockey tryout, and vegan pizza. Little stuff it seems to grown ups but to Riley it is the greatest obstacle she has gone through in a life that hereto had been filled with consistently joyful days. It is also the greatest obstacle her brain trust has ever handled. And by brain trust I mean Pixar’s anthropomorphized metaphor for her mind: a team of emotions that help Riley out from a mission control room in her brain.

The emotions have been perfectly cast from the broad and ever more productive landscape of quality television entertainment. At the center is Joy, voiced by the ever effervescent Amy Poehler (Parks and Recreation), Disgust, an appropriately snarky Mindy Kaling (The Mindy Project), Fear, a fever pitched Bill Hader (SNL), Anger, Lewis Black (The Daily Show) as himself, and finally Sadness, Phyllis Smith (The Office) in all her humble muted Eeyore-like glory. They function, in a tribute to Pixar’s ability to have it all, as part comedy team, part tearjerk squad, and part science lesson. (If their was an emotion left out, I would posit “desire” which would be the antithesis of Disgust much like Anger and Fear or Joy and Sadness play off of each other so well. Perhaps “Desire” shows up at 13).

This is the sort of movie that transcends movie-ness. Instead of talking about whether the movie looked good or was funny, you want to talk about how the movie was about what it was about. After all, everything that is shown onscreen corresponds to something everybody has experienced but does not really understand. We have these unconscious bodies that operate seemingly disconnected with our consciousness. What connect the two are our feelings. But how do those work? Pixar probably is not that far off. The emotions experience Riley’s life through her frontal lobe (this is a bit like the front windshield of a starship). They can’t tell Riley what to do, but they do color her experiences as they form memories (represented by luminous balls). If it is a happy memory, then Joy turns it yellow. If it is a fearful memory, Fear turns it purple. At the end of the day before the colored balls are shipped off to long-term memory (which apparently is consistent with what really happens when we are asleep), if the wall of short-term memory balls are mostly yellow than the team feels that they have had a good day. Their mission is to keep Riley happy. This presents a problem with the character of Sadness whose presence and efforts to help generally disrupt the mission. At one point Joy draws a circle around her and tells her to not leave it as a way of doing her job correctly. Psychologists have a word for this I believe. It’s called Repression. That’s a rather heavy topic for an animated movie to tackle, but Pixar goes even further. Near the denouement of this movie they will tackle the big D. Depression. And the way they do it will probably make you cry and afterwords you will probably think about why you cried and find a very plausible explanation in the way Pixar has portrayed the workings of the emotions in your mind. And you will probably feel better in an enlightened way because feeling sad is sometimes the most healthy way to respond to external stimuli. Psychologists would call that Emotional Maturity, an attribute that the marketers in our modern society have a habit of scorning. Fear it, they say, and buy this thing that will make you happy again. No, says Pixar, Sadness is there for a reason and the wise person would understand its utility. This is the sort of thing that Pixar has made a children’s movie about. To do that as perfectly as they demonstrate is to be a masters of emotions themselves. I tell you this: not since Hitchcock has a moviemaker been so in tune with what the audience is experiencing moment to moment.

But I get too serious. Let’s talk about comedy and how Pixar does not waste a moment in the entire movie when a joke can be somehow shoehorned in. First of all, the brain trust with all their distinct personalities form as good a comedy troupe as there can be. Through a mishap Joy and Sadness are stranded in Long Term Memory and need to find their way back to the control room.  Their journey takes them through several wonderful set pieces as Imagination Land, Abstract Thought, and Dreamworks Productions that has among other things a unicorn as a movie star.  They meet many comic characters. My favorite are the brain beureaucrats. One team works at Long Term memory and “forget” any balls that are rarely used. For instance they take away all of Riley’s piano lessons except “Heart and Soul” and “Chopstix”. But the really funny part is what they keep: a commercial jingle for ‘Triple Dent’ gum which they reuse again and again as a practical joke. Riley is destined to never ever forget it. Another good example is the two guards in front of the door of the subconscious (which hides an angry clown) that perform what sounds like an Abbot and Costello routine about whose hat is “my hat”. Then another time Joy knocks over two boxes, one of Facts and the other of Opinions. As she tries to put them back she exclaims how similar they look. And I haven’t even mentioned the imaginary friend voiced by Richard Kind who is the best part along with everything else.

“Inside Out” is one of Pixar’s best movies. And I say one of the best because I happen to believe “Wall-E” is one of the best movies ever made. So is this movie. When Wall-E (and “The Dark Knight”) failed to get a Best Picture nomination the Academy expanded the field to ten pictures the next year. That should easily include “Inside Out” this year and I’m not saying it should win (I can’t because I haven’t seen all the other movies) but I would be totally fine with the possibility.

A Serious Man (4/5 Stars), October 11, 2009

Who can say to him, “What are you doing?” (Job 9:12)

Oy vey, the Book of Job gets adapted into a movie by the Coen Brothers. With such source material, it is much funnier than you would think it could be. But this is not a comedy. It’s not even really a drama. And although its got some elements of horror, it can hardly be classified as that either. It’s probably best classified as essay porn (and yes I just made that genre up). It’s a thinker that many religion teachers may someday make their students write a term paper on. Like all Coen Brothers’ movies this one has very little in common with any previous Coen Brothers’ movie. They’ve previously done such works as The Big Lebowski, Oh Brother Where Art Thou, Fargo, Raising Arizona, No Country for Old Men and Burn After Reading. This movie takes place in a Minnesota suburb in the late sixties. Above all else, it is very Jewish. Like I said nothing like their other movies. But just as quirky, darkly comic, and very original. 

The book of Job was the first book of the Bible I ever read. It always had a scary magnetism to it like a well-written horror story. It is very different from the lovey-dovey New Testament. There is no ‘consider the lillies’ sentimentality in it. In this book terrible things happen to good people and they seem to happen for no reason at all. Job in the course of a day loses his entire fortune, family, and health. Why? He has no idea. He always was a pious god-fearing man. Three friends visit him and insist that he must have done something wrong to deserve his fate. After all God is just. He rewards the good and punishes the wicked. But Job is steadfast. He declares his innocence and voices his desire to obtain an explanation for his sorry state. He doesn’t curse God; all he wants to know is why. Why has God forsaken him?

In this movie, the character of Job is Lawrence Gopnik (played by Michael Stuhlberg), a family man and physics professor about to receive tenure. Sure enough, bad things start to happen to Larry. His wife wants a divorce and asks him to leave the house. Why? She doesn’t say. The tenure committee is receiving letters denigrating his moral standing. They are anonymous. His neighbor is oddly hostile and may be encroaching on his property line. His oafish sickly brother (Richard Kind from Spin City) has taken up space permanently on his couch. Then there is marijuana, Jefferson Airplane records, strange deaths, and a daughter who seems to do nothing but wash her hair anymore. Larry is at a loss as to why all these things are suddenly happening. He didn’t do anything. What does it all mean?

A friend says that maybe these things are happening because God is trying to tell him something. What it is she doesn’t know but she suggests that Larry talk to a rabbi. Larry goes to three rabbis. Rabbi Scott (Simon Helberg from The Big Bang Theory) seems to be about twenty years old and admits he doesn’t have the kind of life experience that advises a person in Larry’s situation. He does suggest that Larry “consider the parking lot” outside. At times it only looks like a parking lot, but if you look at it a different way and strip yourself of the knowledge of how asphalt and cars work, it can actually look somewhat wonderful and mysterious. In this way Larry can see God in the world. This advice doesn’t go over well, especially since Larry is the kind of physics professor who deals in paradoxes like Shrodinger’s cat and uncertainty proofs. There is a scary/funny scene where Larry fills a giant blackboard with a large complex math proof that proves nothing except that there is no way of knowing anything for certain (it will still be on the midterm though). Such is the annoying thing about God. You can get the best education in the world and not learn a thing about his plans, but steep yourself in ignorance and you can see him in everything, even a parking lot. 

The second Rabbi is not very helpful either. All he does is make jokes. To his credit they are some of the best laughs in the movie. (Did you hear the one about the Goy’s teeth?) But he out and out admits that he hasn’t the slightest clue what God is doing. The way he does it though explains so much about Jewish Comedy. It basically springs from a very human response to a sort of cosmic absurdity: That the people especially chosen by an all-powerful God were fated to be the most put upon and terrorized people in human history. What does that tell you about the nature of God? We laugh because there are no tears left. 

Every person in the movie tells Larry that there is one person he must talk to, and that is Rabbi Marshakt, a very old and wise man. Unfortunately Larry can’t get to the guy, as he is too busy thinking. His son is able to do so though after his bar mitzvah. What the rabbi says to him is worth the great suspense the movie creates for the moment. What it means is something else of course. Is it profound or is it a joke? I suppose it depends on how you feel about the source. 

The Coen Brothers have taken pains not to cast anyone you are remotely familiar with. The only people I recognized were Richard Kind and the delusional nerd from The Big Bang Theory. This gives the movie a very personal and distinct feel to it. There aren’t even any stock Coen Brother actors in this movie. The only person to be in a previous film is Michael Lerner (Barton Fink) and he has but one scene and if I remember correctly no actual lines. It is a very memorable performance nonetheless. 

This movie ranks up their with all the other great Coen Brothers films. It’s not on their top tier with Fargo, The Big Lebowski, or No Country for Old Men. But it is on par with the likes of O Brother Where Art Thou, The Hudsucker Proxy, and Raising Arizona. It may get awards because it happens to be the type of movie that gets nominations. But besides the haunting original score, I can’t say anything in particular jumped out at me. As always Roger Deakins does a superb job as the cinematographer. But unfortunately this isn’t the type of movie that gets noticed for that. His much deserved Oscar will have to wait another year. 

There is one scene that particularly weighs on me as I write this review. One night Larry’s brother goes somewhat nutty and has a breakdown in an abandoned pool at the motel they are both staying at. He denounces God and wails that Hashem has never given him anything. He is especially distressed by his recent blacklist from a neighborhood poker game. All he had in life was playing cards and now he can’t even do that. As bad as Larry’s situation is, it is not as pathetic as his brother’s. Larry, frustrated and confused more than ever just blurts it out: Maybe instead of depending on God, you should help yourself out. What a good question, I mean if God is unknowable why bother with him at all? And perhaps the final scenes are a very cynical answer to that question.