Submitted by Evelyn C. McDonald
Arts & Culture Reporter
March 3, 2016 1:13 p.m.
There are two TV spectacles that I succumb to nearly every year, while swearing I will not. One is the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. My two cats look at me in disgust. I tell them I’m just looking; we come to an uneasy truce then they leave the room. The other spectacle was on TV last Sunday – the Academy Awards.
This year’s award ceremony was interesting from one perspective and it’s not the diversity issue. One of my favorite movies got nominated but not in the category I thought it should have been. “Inside Out” was one of the most original and thought provoking movies of the year. It was nominated in the animated feature category but I thought it could have been considered for best picture.
For those of you who haven’t seen it, “Inside Out” takes place the mind of Riley, an 11 year old girl, and follows the activities of five emotions – joy, sadness, fear, disgust, and anger. When the film opens, Joy is in charge. She works hard to make everything happy for Riley. The family moves from Minnesota to San Francisco but Riley has trouble making the transition. The story is told with humor and imagination.
So why do I think this was a great movie? Three reasons – voice, place, and afterthoughts. In animated features, the voices are very important. The best casting was using the comedian Louis Black as the voice of Anger. It was an inspired choice that works because we know Black’s comedy has a lot of raging in it. The other voices also fit the emotions they portrayed quite well.
An outstanding animation creates a world that we can believe in. In “Inside Out,” everything fit together so well. There were islands of personality containing the important things in Riley’s life such as family, silliness, and ice hockey. As Riley grows, these islands disappeared and new ones arose. There was a storage area for long term memories with workers who periodically pulled out memories to send to an area of discarded memories. Among the discarded memories was Riley’s imaginary friend from childhood.
A good movie should have you thinking about it after you leave the theater. In this movie, we come to see the necessary balance between emotions and how the balance shifts as we grow up. Joy remains the principal emotion in charge for Riley but the others are recognized as important. One of the movie’s devices is to let us see into the minds of Riley’s parents. The emotions guiding them are not joy and that says something about the human condition.
If you haven’t seen it, I recommend doing so even if you never watch animated films.
Evelyn McDonald moved to Fernandina Beach from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. in 2006. She is a chair of Arts & Culture Nassau, a city commission charged with support of the arts in Nassau County. She serves on FSCJ’s Curriculum Committee for the Center for Lifelong Learning. She is also the chair of the Dean’s Council for the Carpenter Library at the UNF. Ms. McDonald has MS in Technology Management from the University of Maryland’s University College and a BA in Spanish from the University of Michigan.