Have all children at some point or another wished for what Elio Solis did? Or some similar variation? Or was it just a few of us? Clearly it was enough to generate a whole Pixar movie out of the concept -often a space for creative animators to reckon with unresolved issues of adolescence. But if the exact desire expressed in Elio, of longing for escape from this world for one where you are more readily accepted and loved, isn’t quite universal, the underpinning emotion of loneliness certainly is.
The brainchild of Coco writer Adrian Molina (initially the director of the film, though he left to make Coco 2 and was replaced by Turning Red’s Domee Shi and Madeline Sharafian), Elio is the story of a child, raised at an air force base by his aunt Olga after the deaths of his parents. With a fixation on space and the notion of alien life stemming from a fantasy of being taken away to a world where he belongs, Elio does against all odds manage to live his dream when he covertly makes contact with extraterrestrial life and is subsequently abducted into the Communiverse, an alien federation of leaders from a myriad of worlds, eager to usher him in. But to be part of this collective, he has to play the part of Earth leader and negotiate with a hostile alien threatening the organization.
This world that Elio is absorbed into is kind of perfect for his and many a kid’s sensibilities (there’s a real Spaceman Spiff from Calvin and Hobbes nature to it). Up to the actual danger and even in some of the midst of it, it is his dream come true with an alien universe that immediately enthusiastically accepts him as one of their own and entrusts him with saving them from a menacing antagonist. Registering at times as a lightweight variation on Ender’s Game, Elio really approaches it all like a kid play-acting their ideal scenario. Even under duress and unexpected complications when the negotiation starts to go sour, his own ingenuity and responses to the situation are too good to be true. He can get out of his bind, gain the upper hand, and enjoy himself as it all appears to work out. Hell, he even has a method to placate his aunt back on Earth in the form of a gelatinous clone created to take his place.
It is an area where Elio struggles with its conflict, the movie taking a long time to entertain any notion of Elio’s attachment to his life and family back home, which he is very eager to cast off, or learn of any more complicated consequence to his deception and junior politicking. The interim between his abduction and understanding of what he's lost is taken up by the friendship that develops between Elio and Glordon, the eager and excitable worm-alien son of the aggressive ambassador whom Elio makes a bargaining chip when he helps him escape from the ambassador's ship. An odd start to a friendship, diffused by Glordon being pretty naively on board with his own manipulation, that is deepened by a sense of kinship in how both children feel towards their parent figures and the expectations of their respective societies. That is where the heart of the movie really rests, though its emotional resonance is under-cooked and it arrives in a bit of a mess of tangled thematic priorities.
Yet when it does find itself the movie's sincerity is effective. Elio's eccentricity and the film's affection for it is well articulated: he is formally introduced via a montage of wild behaviour as he crafts numerous E.T.-style alien communication devices set to Talking Heads's "Once in a Lifetime" -all markers to denote the weirdness of this kid. He might be vaguely autism-coded, but it is certainly drawn as a feature not a bug of his personality. In any case the movie relates his feelings of isolation very well, even if the means of illustrating them more tangibly falls to clichés of needlessly aggressive bullies and a misunderstanding over his aunt’s sentiments. And obviously of course this lines up well with his relationship with Glordon, who is the first kid he meets on a similar wavelength. As Elio tries to protect Glordon from being put through his species’ maturity ritual, there’s even a curious (and deeply cogent for these times) queer youth metaphor. Glordon adamantly does not want to be put through a conventional coming-of-age process -Elio understands and respects that autonomy where Glordon’s father does not.
The journey of avoidance in this takes some fun turns, particularly an all-too-brief return to Earth that partakes at one point in what, if divorced from context, would be the creepiest scene Pixar has ever produced. Every so often prior to this the film does glimpse at the narrative back home with Olga and the clone Elio -a funny little collection of sketches you wish was expanded upon. But a frenetic pace that feels terrified of the movie eclipsing ninety minutes sacrifices this to hightail it to an emotional catharsis. The family message underlined by it is a bit garbled. There are a few critical and touching moments, though they come without as much weight as they might if the story had spent more of its second act on Elio’s feelings about his tragedy and his aunt. There is cuteness and a grasp at profundity, but nowhere near the emotional beauty of past Pixar films.
Elio is an imaginative movie though. It’s animation reveals Shi’s hand -it isn’t as stylishly energized or well-rounded as in Turning Red, but it is appealing especially where the alien designs and the Communiverse itself come into play. Glordon in particular, who is kind of like a baby version of a sandworm from Dune crossed with Heimlich from A Bug’s Life, is a fun character to watch, and occasionally there is a beat of visual humour on par with Turning Red. Certainly though it could have used a lot more.
Pixar did not have a lot of confidence in Elio by the fact it was delayed for so long and not much promoted now that it has come out in a manner similar to Disney’s Wish a few years ago. And while the movie is indeed not up to the median of Pixar standards, their efforts to ignore and suppress the film have been rather dismaying, especially as it comes amidst the conversation of Pixar moving away from original ideas and towards extending their stable of franchises. This is a movie that for its faults is modestly creative at a time where Pixar is in a creative rut, and has enough to connect with kids, understanding them better than a lot of contemporaneous animated fare. A shabby film to be sure, though one with attractive sparks in its skies.
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JordanBosch
Follow me on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/jordanbosch.bsky.social
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch
Comments
Post a Comment