Opinion

Not all child's play with Pixar-perfect animations

William Scholes

William Scholes

William has worked at The Irish News since 2002. His areas of interest include religion and motoring.

Don't be fooled by the bright colours and perky characters of Inside Out - Pixar's films have a dark underbelly
Don't be fooled by the bright colours and perky characters of Inside Out - Pixar's films have a dark underbelly Don't be fooled by the bright colours and perky characters of Inside Out - Pixar's films have a dark underbelly

IN the darkness, I feel a hand reach out and take mine. It's a little hand, soft and gentle, yet also insistent and determined, and as familiar to me in its every perfect detail as my own.

The hand squeezes mine, and a small voice whispers in the flickering semi-darkness of the cinema: "Daddy, it's OK."

And then the killer blow: "Don't worry. I'll look after you."

Instantly, my stoic self-control crumbles; half a breath later the dam is breached.

The trickles meandering from my swollen eyes down each cheek surge, creating a passable impression of the Great Flood.

What powerful force is this? What is it that can turn a grown man into a blubbering wreck, a soggy clump of tissues in one hand and his son's hand held tight in the other?

Films - specifically those aimed at children - do this to me; I doubt I'm alone.

Just thinking of Dumbo's moonlit visit to his captured mother, manacled and behind bars in the 'mad elephant' trailer, and how she cradles him in her trunk and rocks him to sleep, is enough to make jumbo tears well up in my eyes. The only thing sadder than one sad cartoon elephant is two sad cartoon elephants.

This phenomenon is bad enough in the sanctuary of home, sitting on the sofa and watching a DVD with my son, but in the cinema the effect is multiplied.

Quite why this should be so is something of a mystery. Many children's films are animations, so don't even involve 'real' actors. It feels irrational. Maybe I'm just a softy, or prone to melancholy.

Or could it be because our emotions are particularly vulnerable in a movie theatre?

Going to the cinema is a communal, shared experience yet it also oddly individual.

You get your own seat, for a start, but you are also embraced by a peculiar sense of solitude when the lights go down, surrounded with sound and towered over by an image taller than a house.

Or maybe it is even simpler than that, and it is all about the story. A good tale, well told in whatever medium, can deeply stir the emotions; pairing a strong story with the cinema's ensconce creates a potent mix.

Becoming a parent has left me further helpless in the face of all of this. Fatherhood changes your life in all sorts of ways, including how you watch films.

Take, for example, Pixar's Toy Story triptych. Before my son was born, I thought of these as clever, entertaining and amusing, in a fun-for-all-the-family sort of way.

They were children's films with more than enough wit and invention to keep adults entertained too - a rare enough feat and worth celebrating in its own right. And what's not to like about Buzz Lightyear, Woody, Mr Potato Head, Jessie and the rest of them?

I used to think that the toys were utterly dependent on the children they belonged to and devoted themselves to, and that this device was used by the film-makers to reflect how the children watching the Toy Story films wholly relied on their own parents.

But watching them with my son I now regard them differently. It is us - the adults, the parents, the mums and dads - who are the toys, fearful of how our relationship with our children will change as they grow up.

Around half-way through the middle film, Toy Story 2, lies the emotional heart of the trilogy, as the cowgirl doll Jessie sings When She Loved Me, its elegy a soundtrack to images showing how her once-smitten and loving owner grew up and ultimately forgot about her.

It's a different sort of tear-jerker to the scene with Dumbo and his mother, and altogether more devastating.

U and PG certificates? You've got to be joking - these films pack such an emotional punch they should be X-rated.

Pixar, owned by Walt Disney, has form with films that seamlessly entertain children while discomfiting their parents.

The opening sequence of Up, which condenses the life of a husband and wife, with its myriad hopes and disappointments, into a four-minute scene which ends with the man, Carl Fredricksen, as a lonely widower is perhaps the best example of this - if by 'best' we mean something that is guaranteed to leave an adult in tears while their children look on in slight bewilderment.

Pixar is back at it again with its latest film, Inside Out, which has just arrived in cinemas.

It tells the story of an 11-year-old girl from two perspectives: the 'inside', where five emotions - joy, anger, sadness, fear and disgust - control her mind, personality and behaviour; and the 'out', where she is struggling to come to terms with a house move and other upheavals.

Mainly she is working out what growing up means, both for her and her relationship with her parents.

Which brings me back to where I started, with my six-year-old son squeezing my hand.

"Daddy, it's OK. Don't worry. I'll look after you."