“Coco” is a Pixar musical cartoon shot by Lee Unkrich (directed by Toy Story 3 and co-authored by Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo) and Adrian Molina. The cartoon tells about a Mexican boy who dreams of becoming a musician - and for this goes to the realm of the dead.
In the cult film “Ghost”, the heroine Whoopi Goldberg, saying goodbye to a pair of lovers (she is alive, he is already a ghost), utters the famous phrase: “Have a good life and a good death for you”. Usually in this place the hall laughs. What is a “good death” if not an oxymoron? However, the Day of the Dead - a holiday for Mexico is no less important than Christmas - seen by the eyes of animators at Pixar Studio, for the first time, gives the phrase a distinct meaning. Such an afterlife, colorful, surreal, free, surpassing even mad fantasies Tim Burton from “Corpse Bride” is everyone's dream. Especially the baby. The proof is that the boy Miguel, who escaped from his stubborn kin to the welcoming dead and finally, became happy there. Coco, full-length animated film by Lee Unkrich (Toy Story 3) and Adrian Molina (debut in directing, screenwriter of The Good Dinosaur), talks about this.
However, at first it seems that Pixar is not the same - in recent years we have become accustomed to this unpleasant thought. The times of revolutionary cartoons (“Monsters, Inc.”, “Ratatouille”, “WALL-E”, “Up”) have passed, with each year more sequels and prequels, past achievements are being exploited - in short, everything is for sale. Recent “Cars 3” convinced the same. In Coco, she was initially alarmed by the alleged secondary nature of the other full-length animated film produced by Guillermo del Toro “The Book of Life”, also about the Day of the Dead. They used to steal from Pixar (“AntZ”, “Rio”, “The Secret Life of Pets”), now Pixar is stealing it. In addition, of course, it does it at the highest technical level.
Yes, the equipment of this studio is the best in the world, and unwittingly you are amazed at the colorful and at the same time realistic landscapes, interiors, people and animals in Coco. However, the innovation of Pixar has never been limited to an aspect of purely formal. The studio took on taboo topics and offered unexpected solutions to eternal problems. Surely now they ran out of plots? As it turns out, by no means. In addition, to “The Book of Life”, “Coco” has nothing to do with. Only at first it seems that, the message is too correct, almost already boring.
Miguel grows up in a large family and since childhood knows the legend of the great-great-grandfather of the guitarist who despicably abandoned his great-great-grandmother. In retaliation, she closed the doors and windows for any music, devoting herself to the shoemaking craft. Following her covenant, all her relatives now stitch their shoes, - and the music in the house remained forbidden. Miguel decides to break the taboo and follow in the footsteps of the town's legend, guitarist and singer Ernesto de la Cruz. True, that is no longer alive, but for Mexico it does not matter - you can meet with any deceased in the realm of the dead. To celebrities and there it will be difficult to get through to the reception.
It seems that we have a standard plot - albeit narrated with unusual humor and ingenuity, and with brilliant music by Michael Giacchino - about how to believe in yourself and follow your dreams in order to fulfill your purpose and succeed (this canon is called “American dream"). However, the bid turns out to be a masterly trick. Relaxing in anticipation of a predictable outcome, the viewer will receive a dusty bag on the head more than once or twice. As it turns out, the cinema is absolutely not about that, and the success in the sublunary world interests the authors much less than those bizarre insights that Miguel expects in the other world.
“Coco” is a rare, if not unique, children's film about the acceptance of death, not only of one’s own, but also the death of loved ones and relatives. This is not only about cute skeletons in sombreros who dance and sing, welcome the traveler from the world of the living and are ready to sing with him in chorus (although every child and most adults love macabres, and the animation exploits this fact from the time of Disney's The Skeleton Dance) . It is about how the compensatory mechanisms of memory cancel death and time — with the help of fantasy, literally blurring the line between reality and fiction. From this point of view, Coco is the logical continuation of the best Pixar cartoon in recent years, “Inside Out”. In addition, the image of Coco granny herself (the key, albeit formally episodic) develops the main themes of another Pixar masterpiece - “Up”, which was also dedicated to aging and death.
The dilemma of “choice / predestination” in Coco is also shown in an unexpected way. It turns out that the pursuit of a dream is a chimera. Traditions, like genetics, have enormous power over man, which is meaningless to resist. This gloomy determinism ideally corresponds to the folklore background of the cartoon - after all, it is all about the traditions, their observance or violation. In general, with all the visual riches, at times “Coco” gives the impression of being properly uncomfortable. For example, a stage show staged by a dead (and obviously gone crazy) Frida Kahlo reminds of a nightmare, and some Alebrije — fantastic beasts that Kahlo and her husband, Diego Rivera, loved so much — look scary.
Finally, the most bizarre and deep parallel hidden inside the film is “Divine Comedy”. Where you do not expect, intrigue suddenly taxied on a romantic and tragic love story. In his search, Miguel finds what he was looking for. True, an intelligent viewer will understand this by the name of the dog Miguel - and, without alternative, the most charming cartoon character, a stray dog with a tattered ear and a pathologically long tongue. The owner called him "Dante."
Attention, spoiler!!!
From the gloomy forest, in which the restless dog's namesake, and Miguel, and the film audience as a result will manage to get lost. No matter how Pixar experimented, the light at the end of the tunnel is still a must-have attribute of family animation.