Animated Memory

The scene is disorienting to the viewer from the beginning, with the camera moving up and down to simulate Andy jumping on his bed with Woody. This helps the viewer adjust to Woody’s own disorientation as the scene progresses.

Andy wears a t-shirt that features Woody, and much of the decor around the room bears the toy’s image. Soon, he is set down and Buzz appears. Buzz symbolically kills Woody with his laser during this play, and Andy knocks Woody over to underscore this death. Slowly, all the objects that used to bear Woody’s likeness are changed or covered up by images of Buzz Lightyear: Andy’s costume, the posters, his drawings, and finally we see that the very bedspread has been pulled from under Woody.

As Andy’s room changes, Woody’s relationship with the other toys and his status as leader is called into question, and Woody is usurped by Buzz in this realm as well. This information is delivered to the viewer without dialogue, using juxtapositions of older views of Andy’s room with the new ones emblazoned with images of Buzz. The color palette of this scene also changes, with the muted cowboy colors of mustard yellow and burnt sienna replaced with bright blues and greens, suggesting a tonal shift on this level as well.

Close-up and point of view shots of Woody’s reactions to the changes taken place are foregrounded in the scene, and the music playing over the top further explains his reaction: these things are happening not just around him but to him. He is being symbolically replaced by another toy. At the end of the scene he spends the night not in Andy’s bed, but in the toy box, which is vaguely coffin shaped and shows yet another kind of symbolic death of Woody’s reign.

Is it more tragic to think

That you can fly

And then fall,

Or never to believe

At all?

Princess Atta has regularly derided and devalued Flik’s potential contributions to Ant Island society, but in a moment of desperation she applies one of his inventions, a telescope so that she can see what is happening to her sister. That her sister would become a bridge between the two characters is foreshadowed by Dot’s and Flik’s relationship and relatively similar status at outsiders.

As the elders panic, Atta looks around, and the camera cuts to a shot of a blade of grass with a drop of dew before cutting back to Atta. She recognizes what this combination means and creates the telescope. Her use of one of his inventions signals a shift in her thoughts about Flik, a change in her views that coincides with the literal camera perspective, which the audiences sees as a distorted fish-eye lens within a circular frame.

Although Flik has continually disappointed her by stepping out of line, his ingenuity saves her sister and enables her to see this literally through the telescope. She may often disagree with him, but this scene will also foreshadow the end of the film, in which the safety of the collective is ultimately more important to Princess Atta than her own fears and prejudices.

Women in my life taught me

How to apply blush,

To make the perfect pie crust

And string daisy chains,

Sew a button,

Write down how I was feeling,

Make amends,

Paint in oils,

Bandage a cut.

Men in my life taught me

How to weld

And debate

To measure twice and cut once,

Finish out the season,

Fry donuts,

And see vulnerability

In people who

Rarely show it.

Her first night in Monstropolis, Sully tries to lure Boo over to some newspaper on the floor using a sugary cereal as if she was a puppy. Unsurprisingly, she hops into his bed instead. He concedes to defeat, despite concerns about her toxicity, and leaves to sleep in his armchair. Before he can leave, Boo stops him pointing at the closet. Though she is preverbal, she is clearly fearful and communicates to him using one of her drawings. The drawing is a both a method of communication and a form of tangible memory. It is imbued with some of the same emotions that she would feel when confronted with the monster in question, Randall. Unable to convince her that it’s safe, Sully tells her he will sit in front of the closet until she falls asleep.

I remember the spider crawling across my mother’s back

I couldn’t tell her it was there–

only shake & point & grimace, wide-eyed.

She understood my mute terror

and screamed

while my father glowered because I did not

save my mother.

I couldn’t say it’s name–

to say a thing’s name makes it real

The first time we see Dory really remember something is during a time of stress. Her struggle in reading the text is juxtaposed with Marlin’s struggle to not be eaten by the angler fish while simultaneously using its light to allow Dory to read. Although she reads the text aloud, Marlin isn’t able to concentrate on what she’s saying as he’s fighting for their survival.

He asks Dory what it said and she tells him, reciting the information perfectly. Though the audience sees Dory forget and forget, this moment of triumph allows her meaningful contribution (the ability to read) to shine through and speaks to the unpredictability of memory even when it’s supposed to be predictably faulty. Though this information means nothing to her, she is able to remember it, and this becomes a source of pride for her–overshadowing their near escape from death even though the terrifying teeth of the angler fish are still in the frame.

What’s-his-name

Lies at the back of your mind

& the tip of your tongue,

& the year it came out

& the director’s name

Is all up there somewhere

& you knew it a second ago

& it’s there

(Please let it be there)

And your mind drifts–

And there it is

Or not

& you look it up 

Or you let the moment pass

Or you spend the rest of the night

wondering.

Mr. Incredible visits Edna Mode to ask for a repair job on his super suit. She leads him into her palatial home, which is built on a monumental scale (almost a comedic juxtaposition to her own stature) and decorated in an odd mix of neo-classical white and brown stone and modern styles in black and red. She fills in her old associate on her current lack of job satisfaction, saying “I used to design for gods.” The camera shoots a modern, yet clearly classically inspired fountain of a Greek or Roman warrior from a low, heroic angle. She asks if maybe he’s brought her a challenge.

Now intrigued, the camera follows her more closely, and she fills more of the frame as she examines his suit. Edna tosses the suit in the trash and tells him he can’t be seen in the suit, walking away from him as he fishes it out. He reminds her that she designed the suit, but she is dismissive. The camera follows her from behind, which reinforces her line “I never look back, darling, it distracts from the now.” Her need for a creative challenge leads her to dismiss and disavow her old work.

I’m not sure if the past distracts

From the now

Or if it informs it,

Inextricably entwined. 

Throwing away the photographs,

Burning journals,

Donating the gifts,

Getting rid of the clothes

Only means that next time

You think back you’ll remember

It differently.

The flashback scene is presented in hazy pastels. Sally, who tells Lightning the story of the town’s transition after the interstate was built, doesn’t have firsthand knowledge of the event. The haziness can partially be attributed to this and to a sort of innocent quality filtered over the scene. The music, “Our Town” by James Taylor, contributes to these feelings of nostalgia with its soothing, melancholy notes. The song also feels strangely filtered or muffled in the scene compared with the volume of the dialogue that occasionally intrudes. As the scene goes on, the town fades progressively, first from the literal map, and then in successive images of shops going out of business and growing dark. After some of the townspeople exchange sad glances, they retrench into their homes and the town appears completely empty.

My papa drove

The whole of Route 66

From Chicago

to Santa Monica boulevard

With his PT Cruiser club,

Nana in the front seat.

They drove the old highway

As much as they could, stopping

When the road ended

In someone’s driveway,

At a defunct bridge,

When there was car trouble.

In Galena, Kansas,

A couple purchased a whole town

That they were doctoring up,

Which is where the tow truck is

That inspired Mater in the movie.

At every 50s diner along the way

They’d eat, occasionally

Sharing banana splits &

Befriending motorcycle gangs.

They met wild donkeys who came over

To be pet, and one

Laid his head in Nana’s lap.

They saw the Grand Canyon

And Oak Creek Canyon,

Swearing the former

More gorgeous than

The latter.

And then they drove through Los Angeles,

Where they’d been young,

And watched the sunset

Over the pacific ocean.

When the food is placed down in front of Ego, the first reaction we see is from the antagonist, Chef Skinner. He immediately recognizes the dressed up version of the peasant dish for what it is: ratatouille. Skinner dismisses it out of hand, and the camera moves over his shoulder as the viewer watches him watch Ego’s reaction. At first, Ego is inscrutable. He is so pale he is nearly purple, and he picks up his pen to take notes, presumably on the aroma and plating of the dish. He stabs a piece, brings it to his lips, and then the camera suddenly moves to his eyes, which widen. Then the scene audibly zooms away from the present so fast it’s as if we have time traveled.

The shot of Ego sitting is replaced by a young Anton with a skinned knee and a quivering lip, framed in the doorway and backlit in the golden light of the setting sun. His mother places the dish in front of him, he takes a grateful bite, and immediately the view whooshes back to the present. An out of body experience has taken place.

Ego is stunned and his pen falls in slow motion, with a crash. His color has been restored, as if, in this one bite, he has been renewed or reborn in some way. He blinks, dazed, and then consumes joyfully. The camera pans quickly to Skinner who struggles with his emotions–extreme pleasure in what he’s eating and detestation for where it comes from.

When I’m sick I make

Chicken noodle soup,

Or if I’m lucky

My mom will make it for me

Because hers is always better.

I always keep kielbasa in the freezer

Because my dad taught me

Kielbasa, egg, and rice

Is what you cook

At the end of a long day

When you don’t want to cook anything.

When a long day becomes

A long week, I crave

macaroni and cheese,

Box is fine, baked is better,

Real stovetop is best,

When everything becomes

A gooey, stringy mess of carbs.

But then there’s tandoori chicken,

Lamb vindaloo, and palak paneer,

And the spices make me feel

Like what I’m missing is just

The perfect combination,

And that everything comes down

To just tweaking the recipe,

Gulping down masala chai,

And heaping every good thing

Over rice.

After Carl alienates all of his companions, he trudges back into his house, which is now almost colorless and shabby feeling. He puts his and Ellie’s chairs to rights and the camera cuts frames them symmetrically as he sits down, sighing. He places Ellie’s vision of their home in Paradise Falls (a picture ripped from a library book with an image of her playhouse pasted on top) back into the book. He turns the pages, slowly, and they fill the screen as melancholy music plays quietly in the background. His eyes well with tears, but before he can put the book down without looking through the rest of it (again), the page slips and he sees that images have been pasted into the rest of the book.

The shots cut between the photos and Carl’s reactions to them, and the tears change from ones of sadness to something more bittersweet. The music builds. She writes at the end of the book that it is time for him to have a new adventure. When he looks up from the book, the light in the house has brightened, showing his mood altered and spirit lightened. He reaches for Russell’s badges, lying on the arm of the chair as if Ellie is giving them to him. He looks at her empty chair and crosses his heart. This message is the impetus for Carl to let go of the past, symbolically throwing out large pieces of furniture that were holding the house, and him, down.

Scrapbooking starts off

As a simple idea

And becomes a beast–

Eating everything in its path

Demanding more food

More pictures, more glue,

More glitter, more originality,

More layout ideas,

More keepsakes, more bulk,

And then, inevitably,

Is a shadow of what it could be,

Disdain dripping from every

Lifting edge and crooked placement,

Resents you for making it,

For having the gall to try

In the first place.

A note written by Woody prompts Andy to give his old toys to Bonnie, whose mother works at the daycare, and who engages in the kind of imaginative play that Andy did when he was little. Bonnie, shy for the moment, hides behind her mother as Andy introduces his favorite toys to her, eventually surrounding her with them. After he gives Buzz Lightyear to her, she crawls over to the box and looks inside, saying “my cowboy!” Andy looks inside the box, and there’s Woody, hat beside him. Andy picks him up and Bonnie predicts what he’ll say next when his string is pulled, showing the pair of them that he’s already changed hands. Bonnie reaches for him, excited, and Andy pulls away possessively. Bonnie’s hurt reaction causes the shot to change to Woody’s face, and he passes down his favorite toy, telling her why Woody is so important. The shots cut between the three of them, zooming in towards Woody’s face, which gives the impression that the currently inanimate Woody is taking in every compliment Andy is giving him. During this exchange, there are more close-up and medium two-shots than any other time in the scene, making it feel especially intimate and special. She hugs the doll and then the moment shifts and she and Andy play with the toys together, sealing the bond between them.

Andy surrounds Bonnie with

The artifacts of his childhood–

The fiercest dinosaur,

The evil Dr. Pork Chop,

The madly in love couple,

Jessies the toughest cowgirl

Who loves her loyal horse, Bullseye

& the coolest toy ever–

Buzz who can fly & shoot lasters,

And Woody who will always

Be there for him

And now for her.

What Bonnie gives

resides in the abstract

an opportunity to play,

a relief for an uncluttered

future, a sense that he’s done

the right thing by letting go.

After Mater is captured, he is gassed and knocked out. While unconscious, he enters a kind of dream space. He is suspended high over the scenes from earlier in the film, given a bird’s eye view of his own actions. Everything is dark, and he hears the voice of the spy car, Finn McMissile, in head saying that everyone sees him as a fool. The first thing he sees is an image of himself in the mirror, upset and hurt, clearly meant to be a moment of introspection and even confrontation with his own actions. The mirror swings open to reveal overhead shots of past events where Mater embarrassed himself without fully realizing it.

The sounds in this scene are very far away and echo, which emphasize the distance Mater needs from them to examine his behavior and to understand why his friend treated him poorly. Each of the moments shown are dark (as if presented in some kind of tableau) before they are illuminated with a spotlight, suggesting that his memory is highlighting the most important, or at least most memorable features of the scene–his friend’s words and reactions–and cutting out extraneous background details. From here the dream enters a sillier and yet slightly creepy phases where images of cars laughing at him are juxtaposed with the clanging of a gong. Besides simply cutting back and forth, the camera also swings like a pendulum. Ultimately the combination of the sound and motion wakes Mater, the motion in the real world having informed the dream space.

Slipping down

The icy path,

Tumbling down

The bark chip covered hill,

Keeling over

With unsightly laughter,

Toppling over

In clumsy high-heeled steps

Take a spill–

Stumble after spilling

A drink where more was drunk

than had been spillled,

Collapse

Since the tears cannot wait,

Pitch forward,

A graceful belly flop,

Falling, failing

headlong.

Previously at odds with each other, the fishing scene allows Merida to teach her mother something and allows each to see the other in a new light. At the end of the scene, Eleanor walks out of the river, and Merida follows. The lighting, which has been steadily fading, is meant to represent the golden hour right before sunset that soon yields to darkness. As Merida follows and the trees close in, the scene gets darker, foreshadowing the events to come. She jogs past the rock where her mother had set down her crown, and the camera lingers on it in a close up before cutting to Merida continuing to follow her mother deeper into the forest. Without saying anything, the audience knows that a very important part of Eleanor’s identity has been left behind. When her mother turns, she is not Eleanor, but a true bear as the spell has foretold. And it is not until she raises her claws to swipe at her child that she realizes that this change has taken place.

It’s all in the eyes,

The windows

Drawn curtains and all:

Flickers, glances,

Gazes, stares.

It resides in the corners

At the tear ducts,

In the creases

twinkles, wrinkles,

In the sheen and gleam

Of eyes in the darkness–

The last thing to disappear

Like a Disney villain’s.

Eyes glossy with tears,

Eyes dull or dark or light or quick,

Eyes that burn,

& eyes that trick.

Even before Dean Hardscrabble appears on the scene, the atmosphere in the room is tense and everything is dark. The professor announces she is in the room before she enters the frame, giving both the class of monsters and the audience the eerie feeling that she’s been lurking in the shadows for a while. She enters, chin held high, unconsciously (or consciously mimicking the marble bust in her image. Her trophy, the record-breaking canister, is on a separate, adjacent plinth. As she enters, she brushes the top of the canister for dust, her talons scraping gently across the surface as she brushes the fate of the students away with a flick. The scene progresses until a confrontation between Mike and Sully results in Sully accidentally knocking the canister off of its stand. The camera moves up to show the marble bust of Hardscrabble, reminding everyone that she’s there watching.

There are gasps as the canister falls. After a moment’s pause, it lets out a scream and steam propels it throughout the room, causing the lights to surge before falling at Mike and Sully’s feet in the light from the window that looks like a spotlight. Mike reaches toward it, and then, to further emphasize the damage done, the ends pop off and the springs break loose. Hardscrabble alights in the background, her wings outspread and filmed from behind so they fill the scene, signalling the reckoning to come. She is obscured and blends into the darkness in a way that the green Mike and blue and purple Sully could never hope to achieve. She picks up the broken canister without looking at them and walks into the center of the room, into and then through the light so that Mike and Sully are now illuminated behind her. She seems supremely unconcerned about the destruction, but this easy attitude belies her brutal examination which follows.

The moment before

The cup shatters

Is worse than the crack

And clatter,

The broken glass,

The no-stepping-on-a-crack

Tiptoes walk

To fetch the broom, vacuum,

Dust pan, thick soled shoes.

The moment you know

That it’s out of your hands

And onto the floor

And that you can’t save it,

All you can do is watch it fall.

In order to prevent the installation of a new core memory, Joy captures it, but knocks out all the other core memories onto the floor of headquarters. The camera moves to an exterior shot of headquarters, and the connections between the the memories and the different aspects of Riley’s personality have been deactivated. The islands go dark. There’s a cut back to Riley who stops crying only to sink back into her seat, her personality seemingly erased. Then the camera cuts to the headquarters interior. Tension in the scene mounting, they are sucked into the memory tube for long term storage, landing in a kind of ball pit after they exit from the pipe. The scene progresses, Joy clutching the happy core memories to her–the unhappy memory neglected in the ball pit. Although Joy, Sadness, and the core memories are central to Riley’s understanding of herself–they are still pictured as small next to the enormity of Riley’s long term memory–suggesting that we can get lost in ourselves emotionally. This journey is one of growth and nuance, as the emotions are not only helping Riley but exploring in their own right.

An exploration of the 27 emotions identified by Alan S. Cowen and Dacher Keltner of UC Berkeley

I admire my mother,

adore my husband,

appreciate

Nina Simone’s voice

and the way the ocean rolls along the shoreline.

My brother amuses me,

makes me worry about him,

leaves me in awe of him.

New people make me awkward,

but never bored.

The aroma wafting from a cup of tea

calms me,

People dressing up their dogs

confuses me.

I’m craving seafood for dinner,

but nothing disgusting like mussels.

I feel empathy for my friend’s bad back.

A good film entrances

& a good book leaves me envious

of the writer’s skill.

Travel excites me.

Spiders scare me,

and I’m in horror

of making the wrong choices,

being a disappointment.

I’m interested in history

& my family brings me joy

as does a witty comeback

or the perfect piece of toast.

I’m nostalgic for a past

I never knew,

and I’m a romantic at heart,

which is the only place to be one.

Wasted potential makes me sad, 

but repairing something gives me satisfaction.

I have a crush on Idris Elba & 

the version of Gene Kelly that existed

in the 1950s. I want

to express my sympathy

for the family of the victims

of this week’s shootings

(and last week’s and next week’s).

And when I can master or accept

these emotions

I will feel nothing

short of triumph.

Arlo’s father fills the corn silo and steps back from it, admiring his handiwork. His wife tells him that he should make his mark on the silo. They both do so, and then tell their children that they must earn their marks in their turn when they accomplish something “bigger than themselves.” While he delivers his speech on the importance of earning your place in the family, the three small dinosaur siblings are shot from above, illustrating visually that they are too little to earn their place because there is such a big distance between the parents (and what they’re able to accomplish) and their children.

As the scene progresses, the young dinosaurs have grown a lot, and some time has passed before they’re able to clear and plow entire fields and put their own marks on the silo. Although Buck is shown in close-up, to show his strength, and Libby is shown in wide shot to emphasize the size of her achievement, both are shown with their parents cheering them on. Arlo is only shown as an observer in medium shots, which show how small he is, since he can fit in that size frame, and his brother cannot. He is usually alone or being reprimanded by one or the other of his parents, but his determination to make his mark only leads to him getting in more trouble.

In the end,

Everything turns out

Right round

When it’s written down,

Has a sense of being

Complete

When it’s only

Making sense of

The fragments.

The scene begins with an exterior shot of the tank with Sigourney Weaver doing a voiceover, saying “every fish we rescue will eventually return home.” Dory believes that’s what she’s doing now. She swims toward the floor of the tank and brushes sand (simulating dust) off the shell with her fin. Beside her appears an imprint of her parents and herself as a small child. Her father lays the ghostly shell over the one that Dory can see. They tell her if she gets lost, she just needs to follow the shells. She swims slowly after the imprint of her family, her movements emphasized by the slow pacing, the undulating water and the light dancing. At one point, the shot becomes wider, helping establish Dory’s place in the overall environment of the tank.

Every time she gets a little bit closer, she triggers another memory, some ghostly imprints, some full flashbacks. Playing with how Dory’s memories are represented in the film allows the audience to experience it with her, creating uncertainty for the viewer about what will be remembered and how the audience will see it. Some memories are represented more or less hazily than others, which is demonstrated through the imprints, which the audience watches with her, but which she reacts to much more slowly as if there’s a significant delay in her processing. Touching objects–the shells–and specific phrases seem to trigger her memory best. And by the end of the scene, Dory will remember, however briefly, how she lost her parents.

My childhood home

Is littered

With imprints of my past

Selves, waiting

To be rediscovered

By the brush of a hand

Against a doorframe,

Or the way the light,

Plays against the wall

At a certain hour in the morning,

Or the way the coffee pot sounds

Splashing and gurgling–

The same even when

The pot breaks and must be

Replaced.

Triumphant music blares as the camera moves over Radiator Spring’s dirt track, and the scene cuts to Luigi, thanking everyone for coming out. Cruz comes racing into the frame, sliding into place next to Luigi bearing the name of her new sponsor, Dino Co. and with a new number, 51, which was the Hudson Hornet’s number. Her paint is also an homage to the great racer, a metallic Hudson’s blue over her lemon yellow. One of the older racers from the 50s compliments her paint, and behind Mater comes in with a new hat, a dinosaur with a 51 on it–in case the audience has missed the trick. And as if this wasn’t enough, there’s a brief explanation from the Hornet’s mentor. This scene shows clearly that the Cars trilogy is geared towards a younger audience than many other Pixar films because these kinds of visual homages are not usually so explicit. As they compliment Cruz, Lightning McQueen comes in, also supporting a new look. He’s Hudson’s color, but he’s kept his old number and his old sponsor, a record of where he’s been. In this way, his paint functions not only as an homage, but a way to visually mark his identity. Everything he’s learned from his career, from his mentor, from the town, and from training his protege is now emblazoned on his body. He is treated to a series of glamourous, moving close-ups to show off this new look as he joins Cruz on the track. The two banter and then race off, celebratory music playing. The end credits will continue this narrative thread, showing the relationship develop between the two cars.

Cherry red

Corvette convertible–

My grandfather’s dream car

That I never got to drive,

But Paul told me

The car wanted to go fast

And the excitement was contagious

As my grandfather grinned

Whenever the engine revved.

The film ends a year later with another celebration of El Día de los Muertos, and Miguel takes his baby sister up to the ofrenda or shrine, and shows her the pictures of their ancestors while preparations take place in the central courtyard. The colors in the courtyard are warm and vibrant, but inside the shrine room they deepen even more, and everything is bathed in orange and amber. This lighting gives the room a kind of aura of ritual and magic especially with the candles being used to illuminate the space.

The camera cuts from close-ups of the frames on the ofrenda to shots of Miguel and his sister, who reaches for them. He explains to her that these are not just old pictures, they are representations of their family. His grandmother comes into the room, pats her grandson, and places a new picture on the ofrenda, of Mamá Coco. The three look on and the moment becomes sad. But this emotion is fleeting. Miguel hugs his grandmother, the music tempo picks up, and the audience sees that new picture has been laid next to the oldest, and that symbolically there has been a reunion between parents and children. The photo of Héctor has been repaired, and the camera closes in, lingering on his face before dissolving into his skeleton. The reunion of the dead with their family is a literal echo of the photos on the ofrenda and shows the physical links between objects and memory.

I wonder how much of who I am

Can be traced to where I come from,

And what it means that I have never

Set a stone over the bones

Of my ancestors

Or walked where they walked

Because that country

Crosses the borders of history.

The stories are a jigsaw

And the box is missing pieces.