(courtesy IMP Awards)
Stepping into a Pixar film, you are usually guaranteed of two things:
- Characters with form, depth and agency who grab the heartstrings and learn some big life lessons.
- A story which takes you on huge epic leaps of imagination but which retains the ability to slow itself down so you can enjoy the more emotionally intimate moments.
Elio well and truly meets that expectation; but here’s the things with Pixar – where other filmmakers might be happy to do the deliver the same trademark elements over and over because they are expected to, and pretty much phone it in and tick that box, this animation powerhouse looks for ways to present them in ways that feel fresh and dynamic.
Having said that, while Elio is a true delight and will take you on customary adventures into the heart and soul, and places far beyond your everyday, it isn’t one of Pixar’s crowning achievements.
Aiming to be a rumination on grief and how it makes us small when we long to be big, Elio doesn’t quite stick the emotive landing, muddling its portrayal of one kid’s inability to process his grief – understandable; not even adults are good at it and we have way more lived experience up our sleeves to process it – feel a little understated and ineffectual.
It aims for the heart and there are some moments that will really make you feel all the things, but it doesn’t quite gut punch you so that you will reel over with the full weight of the emotions it clearly trying to convey.
But when you meet Elio Solís (Yonas Kibreab), and his struggling aunt Olga (Zoe Saldana), who has taken him in after the untimely death of his young and loving parents – Elio aims for an UP moment but doesn’t quite deliver it – you know one thing … you are going to love this kid and his struggling guardian who really want to find a way to each other.
They just don’t know it yet.
What they do is that Olga isn’t sure how to reach her emotionally closed off nephew who thinks he is unwanted and unloved and who is convinced that if he can just get aliens to abduct him, that he will find his literal place in the universe.
It’s a classic grief-driven case of the grass is always greener, and it helps explain some very strange behaviour by our plucky eponymous protagonist, who has no friends and who, even when he meets a potential one such as Bryce (Dylan Gilmer), is more inclined to use them to fuel his quixotic quest to find his home among the stars than to befriend them for themselves.
He is clearly a lost, sad and lonely kid, and one thing Elio does very well is document what happens to a person swathed in grief and how this tumult of unfamiliar and not easily navigable emotions can unmoor you from people, places and things.
When Elio does finally get abducted by the gregariously colourful and goofy Communiverse, he thinks he’s hit paydirt; here are the alien friends he’s been looking for, and certainly at first, getting to know Ambassadors Questa (Jameela Jamil), Helix (Brandon Moon), Tegman ((Matthias Schweighofer) et. al is the ride of a very young lifetime.
The Communiverse is bright and fun, the inhabitants a welcoming joy and their mistaken belief that Elio is the leader of Earth means he gets the royal treatment on every level.
Best of all, and of course, he is unaware he’s doing this, his grief has been shoved far away and out of mind, and he is convinced that his childlike belief that all his problems would be solved simply by leaving Earth has been proven right.
But that, of course, can’t be the end of the story and when a militaristic and wantonly destructive race of armoured worms turn up, led by the nastily brutish Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett) whose happy-go-lucky sweet son Glordon (Remy Edgerly) becomes fast friends with Elio, things start to fall spectacularly apart.
After all, Elio is a kid and if he can’t handle grief, he certainly can negotiate peace with a swaggering brute of an alien who means to do the Communiverse harm.
But as you might expect, it’s when things go awry, that Pixar’s stories genuinely shine and so it is with Elio which uses its central character’s way-in-over-his-head circumstances to help him see where he belongs and with whom and that even if being in the Communiverse isn’t his destiny, maybe it doesn’t have to be where he goes straight away?
To say much more would be to give the game away completely, and while Elio doesn’t quite nail the journey from searing grief to liberative contentment and peace with unwanted loss, it is still a hugely moving film that will hit anyone who lost someone with the stinging truth of what it means to be mired in the unfathomable wastelands of grief.
One thing it does very well as it teaches some sage life lessons is have a huge amount of fun with what a Communiverse galaxy might look like – it’s LOTS of fun!
Lord Grigon and his nasty pals aside, and this being a Pixar film, there’s more going on there than base level militarism, the Communiverse is a technicolour bright and fun Federation, a place where most people live in peace, harmony and with a galaxy-spanning found family which is a lovely place for anyone to belong.
Even getting there is spectaculalarly expansive and vivaciously blockbustery and honestly as far as unfettered imagination goes, Elio absolutely knocks way out of the universal park, filling its epically bright and fun visuals with some real affecting emotionalism.
While Elio may not one of the high flyers of the Pixar family, it’s still a significant cut above anything else out there, delivering real emotions, richly observed and expressed characters and a heartfelt story, and helps anyone who needs a little assistance to navigate the hellhole mindgames of grief to realise there is a way out of the morass and it may be closer to home than you think.