I'm just warning you, this one is going to be long...
Ok folks, it's 2010. If you haven't yet come to the realization that cartoon movies are made to be a diatribe on cultural absurdities, you clearly haven't seen enough of them. For instance:
In Wall-E, the humans have become so fat and lazy that they forfeited their planet to waste, and have to get off their robotic recliners to do something about it.
In "Over the Hedge", RJ gives a tutorial about how much of human life is centered around food, from a Raccoon's point of view, and pokes a jab about how we're "slowly losing the ability to walk." Ask my wife; every time I see a kid in heelys, I remember and quote aloud that line.
Well today I saw a movie that follows in that great tradition; the tradition of exposing and ridiculing adult culture to our children in cartoon form so that maybe, just maybe, they won't repeat our foolish ways. That movie? Disney's "Up". If you haven't seen it, I'll try not to spoil the ending, but you may just want to go out, rent it, pop some popcorn, watch it and then come back to me. Don't worry ... the blog will still be here.
There are almost too many lessons to take away from the movie to catalog, but I'll do my best. The main purpose of the movie that jumps out to me is answering the question: "What's really important in life." I'll lay the lessons out by character...
Carl Fredrickson is an elderly widower that lived a full life with his wife Ellie, and who wants to fulfill their adventure by flying his house to the place they always dreamed of; Paradise Falls. His valued possessions are a lifetime's worth of pictures of he and his wife Ellie, and most importantly their Adventure book. And while he is the classic depiction of a bitter old man, the viewer is given a glimpse as to why: he is a quiet man who has lived life, including car troubles, house repairs, a miscarriage (or the inability to have chilren) and the death of his wife. The lesson? Don't judge people too quickly, because you don't know their back-story. Well he gets his house to Paradise Falls and then realizes that life isn't about getting your dreams done, it's "What I'm going to do" when I get there. Life isn't exclusively about fulfilling your dreams, it's about coming together to dream about new adventures for the next generation to embark on.
Charles Muntz turns out to be the villian of this movie. He is an adventurer of old that was the inspiration for both Carl and Ellie as children. He makes a discovery which is contested by the scientific community, so he sets out to Paradise Falls to find and capture the bird that will clear his name, and commits that he will not return until he captures that bird. Charles and Carl's paths cross in the wilds of South America, and while he initially seems to be an ingenious pioneer of a man, he quickly flips to show his true character: a man driven by the need to show the world that he's not crazy, who will do anything to see that happen, no matter what the cost or how many people he has to hurt. His valued posessions are the bones of his past exploits. He just wants to complete his set of skeletons. He teaches us that people driven by the need to be recognized have an unlimited capacity to be terrible, because irregardless of their talents and abilities, they are incapable of putting people above their accomplishments.
Russell is a wilderness scout trying to get his last badge so that he can become a Senior wilderness scout. He isn't even doing it to be a senior scout ... he just wants his dad to come to his ceremony and be active in his life again. You learn that his dad is in at least his second marriage (or is dating after his first marriage), and Russell calls his new mom by her first name, saying "She's not my mom." Russell's prized possession is his wilderness scout sash with all of his pins. He, in a protest, lays his sash down at Carl's feet to go off and do what is needed, what is right. He characterizes what is truly courageous: to lay down our lives and interests for the welfare of others.
Alpha and Doug are two dogs, both of which need to be mentioned. Alpha is a condescendingly formal attack Doberman Pincer that Charles Muntz trains to track the giant bird of his obsession. He is the first of a pack of wild dogs trained to do this. Even before I saw Charles Muntz, I thougt to myself, "I wonder what kind of a man trains a dog to be so brutally cruel." Alpha teaches us that you can easily determine the quality of a person by examining the people closest to them, especially those that follow them. Doug on the other hand is a very typical golden retriever; playful, loyal, trusting and even gullible, with a notable distraction by and hatred of squirrels. He is the only member of "the pack" maintained by Muntz who doesn't have a greek letter for a name. He doesn't fit the attack dog mold. My wife made the observation that, "He is the only dog that doesn't have any position with the pack." He gets sent out on "special missions" intended to keep him from getting in the way. The most important thing you'll notice about Doug is that he voluntarily changes masters, from Muntz to Carl, and ends up becoming the "Alpha" of the pack by outsmarting Alpha to help Carl and Russell. His loyalty is based on what we Christians call righteousness: Doing right which is rooted in the expressed heart of God. We do what is right because He did, does, and will continue to do what is right, because He is good.
As they used to say (and need to start saying again), the moral of the story is that people are all the same in that we all dream and have goals. But that isn't nearly as important as what we are willing to do with them. This movie was deeply challenging to me. It left me asking questions of myself, and I pose the same to you. Will we see our dreams fulfilled no matter what, even at the cost of the people around us? Are we willing to lay down our dreams to help those that need it most? Is the end result the most important thing to us, or is it the continued journey that we value above anything else? Is our loyalty based on position and authority or on just kindness (acts of kindness springing from a just heart). Will our lives be rated by our own achievements or by our sacrificial inspiration of others?
The greatest moment in the movie comes at the end, when Carl attends Russell's wilderness scout ceremony. Russell is the only child standing without his father present, and Carl stands to be with him, but then presents him with the pin that Ellie gave Carl as a child, bringing him in to the adventurer club. It's been said that we are a part of a fatherless generation. What Carl does is what is necessary for us to do, if we're willing. It's time to mentor the fatherless to be driven by a need for adventurous community, in place of the success society that abandoned them in the first place.
If you are a person professing the Christian faith, ask yourself this: If our Savior offered to us an abundant and full life, why aren't we taking advantage of it in the same way He did, by laying down our lives for others? Why would we expect fullness of life to look different for us than it did for Him?
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