MOVIE DETAILS
Directed by Lee
Unkrich
Produced by Darla
K. Anderson
Screenplay by Adrian
Molina
Matthew Aldrich
Story By Lee Unkrich
Jason Katz
Matthew Aldrich
Adrian Molina
Starring Anthony
Gonzalez
Gael García Bernal
Benjamin Bratt
Alanna Ubach
Renée Victor
Ana Ofelia Murguía
Edward James Olmos
Music by Michael
Giacchino
Cinematography Matt Aspbury
Danielle
Feinberg
Edited by Steve
Bloom
Lee Unkrich
Production
company Walt Disney Pictures
Pixar
Animation Studios
Distributed by Walt
Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Release date October 20, 2017 (Morelia)
November
22, 2017 (United States)
Running time 105 minutes
Country United
States
Language English
REVIEW
Being
simultaneously life-affirming and death-obsessed is a tough act for any film to
pull off, but Coco manages it. This might start bringing Pixar studios back
from the dead. I’d feared the worst from this movie’s Mexican Day of the Dead
trope, expecting a tiresome parade of sub-Halloweeny horror masks under a
sombrero of cliches. Actually, it’s an engaging and touching quest narrative,
with some great spectacle, sweet musical numbers and on-point stuff about the
permeability of national borders.
Coco is
conceived on classic lines, certainly, but has that rarest of things in movies
of any sort – a real third act and an interesting ending. It has something to
say about memory and mortality and how we think about the awfully big adventure
waiting for us all, which finally incubated an unexpectedly stubborn lump in my
throat. This film has a potency that Pixar hasn’t had for a while, and for
suppressed tears, the last five minutes of Coco might come to be compared to
the opening montage of Up.
We find
ourselves in Mexico, where a kid called Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez)
lives in a small town with his extended family, including his ancient
great-grandmother Coco, who is poignantly on the verge of succumbing to
dementia. Miguel dreams of being a musician such as the mega-celebrity singer
Ernesto De La Cruz (voiced by Benjamin Bratt) who became a screen star and
recording legend before being crushed to death by a falling bell in 1942. But,
like Billy Elliot shoved into the boxing ring, Miguel is all set to join the
family’s trade: making shoes.
The reason is
that his folks have their own deeply internalised betrayal myth: Coco’s father
was a vagabond musician who ran out on a young wife and infant daughter to
chase his musical dreams. The family has sworn never to have anything to do
with music and has even torn this man’s image from the family photograph: that
vitally important image without which an ofrenda cannot be made for the Day of
the Dead when the departed come back for a visit.
Miguel makes
what he thinks is a sensational discovery: this disgraced ancestor was in fact
the legendary lantern-jawed charmer Ernesto de la Cruz, and when a cosmic quirk
of fate puts Miguel accidentally in the Land of the Dead, his mission is to
make contact with De la Cruz and get his all-important blessing to return to
the living world and pursue his musical destiny.
Of course, in
the time-honoured style, Miguel needs a quirky/unreliable helpmeet for the
journey and this is a deceased scallywag called Héctor (voiced by Gael García
Bernal) whose body has a habit of collapsing and reforming with a xylophone
clatter. As with all the comic wingmen in this kind of film, Héctor is a mix of
Sancho Panza and Don Quixote.
In the real
world, the Day of the Dead, with its endlessly Instagrammable images, is danger
of becoming the west’s condescending gap-year obsession. Coco – which can be
compared to the Guillermo del Toro-produced movie The Book of Life – takes a
particular line on this phenomenon: that it is an empowering, family-friendly
folk myth that puts us in touch with our heritage.
Another way of
thinking about it is that it’s a raucous, satirically challenging and
deliberately transgressive tradition that glories in the physical
intractability of death and thereby mocks the pretensions of powerful but
all-too-mortal rulers: which is, incidentally, the tradition that Eisenstein
responded to for his unrealised Mexico film Que Viva Mexico!
Well, that is
not what Coco is about; it is more emollient. Perhaps like Orpheus with his
lyre, Miguel’s way with a guitar will get him back to the world of life and the
world of music, without which, of course, a living death is all he has to look
forward to wherever he happens to be.
He, and we,
absorb the news that the Land of the Dead is not the same as eternity. These
vivified skeletons beyond the grave exist there only as long as someone back on
Earth remembers them, which is why the photo piety of the domestic shrine is so
important. It is a gigantic Valhalla of private and public celebrity. Oblivion
means death and De la Cruz’s most famous song was called Remember Me. This is a
charming and very memorable film.
MORAL
MESSAGES
1.
LESSON #1: EXPLORE THE “DAY OF THE DEAD” CUSTOM--
The annual “Dia de Muertos,” or “Day of the Dead,”
holiday is upon Santa Cecilia and altars called "ofrendas" are being
adorned at homes and gravesites with pictures, marigolds, candles, and treats
to invite the deceased to revisit their families in the land of the living. The end credits of Coco document expansive
research teams and encourage interested viewers to learn more about Dia de
Muertos at their library. Take them up
on that advice.
2.
LESSON #2: THE BENEFITS OF BEING MUSICALLY INCLINED--
One character in Coco declares “never underestimate
the power of music.” The stir of music
is undeniable. Embrace it. Tap into that. Exercise your brain to learn an instrument
and share that passionate talent with others.
3.
LESSON #3: THE LIVING KEEP THE DEPARTED ALIVE--
The memories of those still here are what keep those
deceased from being forgotten. Every
reminisced story or passed-on tale of influence and inspiration create a shared
consciousness. Dia de Muertos takes that
ideal to a large and celebratory level in making this life lesson a family
responsibility. Death requires
inevitable acceptance and all memories eventually fade with generations and
time, but stronger familial roots can hold that loss away longer.
