A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, November 9, 2019

Coco (Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina, 2017)


Coco (Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina, 2017)

Cast: voices of Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach, Renee Victor, Jaime Camil, Alfonso Arau, Natalia Cordova-Buckley, Edward James Olmos, Luis Valdez, Cheech Marin. Screenplay: Lee Unkrich, Jason Katz, Matthew Aldrich, Adrian Molina. Cinematography: Matt Aspbury, Danielle Feinberg. Production design: Harley Jessup. Film editing: Steve Bloom, Lee Unkrich. Music: Michael Giacchino.

When Coco was being made, there was no thought that the film's vibrant evocation of Mexican culture might be seen as a nose-thumbing directed at a xenophobic POTUS. If anything, the concern ran the other way, especially after a bone-headed attempt by Disney Pixar to trademark the phrase "Día de los Muertos" was met with outrage and charges that it was "cultural appropriation and exploitation at its worst." The Disney people backed off, explaining that they were only hoping to protect what was then one of the working titles of the film. Today, after three years of talk about building walls and fighting off invasions, Coco can probably be seen as a vehicle for understanding rather than co-opting another culture. Or what is better, it can be enjoyed for vivid color, imaginative design, and engaging characterization, and for its crowd-pleasing accomplishment of what Pixar and Disney have always done best: blend jokes and scares and music in a wholly satisfying way.
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