Well, they’ve done it again.

Pixar’s latest animated masterpiece, “Up”, is nothing short of breathtaking.  The characters are relatable and reliably well-developed; the story is unique and involving; the mixture of humor and drama is almost perfectly blended and the visuals are (as expected with Pixar’s animation) absolutely stunning.

The story basically follows the interactions between a man named Carl Fredericksen and a little Wilderness Explorer named Russell as they experience imaginative adventures together in a remote corner of South America.

Specifically, the story begins with an especially moving sequence of a young Mr. Fredericksen and his adventurous and vivacious wife Ellie as they experience their life together.  This sequence is made powerful and moving through the absence of any audible dialogue, with a well-chosen and touching chronological montage of the Fredericksen’s married life.  In a very short time you’re permitted and invited to experience the joys and heartaches of life as they are married, as they purchase and refurbish their home, as they cope with the grief of not being able to have children , as they grow old together, as Ellie gets sick and finally as Ellie passes from this earth.

Without his Ellie, Carl is left with loneliness, her memories and their old house.  Seeing him in such a state is truly sad because of the sweetness of their lives together.  She completed him and when she left, the best part of him left with her.

Carl ends up losing the house and when developers are threatening to take him to a retirement home and bulldoze his house, he literally up and floats away in it!  The movie continues in typically brilliant Pixar fashion with Mr. Fredericksen accidentally taking Russell on his floating house with him.  During their journey, they meet a brightly colorful Snipe named Kevin, a silly talking dog named, appropriately, Doug, and a particularly bitter childhood hero of Carl’s, Charles Muntz.

Two things about this movie stood out in my thinking.  First is the power of memories.  Both Charles Muntz and Carl are men unable to let go of his past.  Muntz, the great explorer that he was, once discovered a massive bird skeleton only to be written off by the public at large as a fraud and a cheat.   Carl had lived, loved and lost the one person in the world he wanted to love.  Muntz’s existence consisted solely of finding that large bird and clearing his name, in hopes of regaining something of his former glory.  Carl’s was landing his house next to Paradise Falls (as his wife had once dreamed) in memory of her.  Yet it is only Carl who can let go of the past.  When he runs Russell off and ends up finding his wife’s old Adventure Book, he realizes that before her death she had filled up the “stuff to do” pages from yesteryear with images of her and Carl from throughout their time together.  At the end of these pictures she thanks him for the adventure and tells him its ok to move on.  It was only then that Carl is able to finally say goodbye to his dear wife and realize that there was a sad little boy who loved him and needed him.  Muntz died in his bitterness.  Carl found a son and a new reason to live.

I’ve rarely seen such a loving, tender, potent and poignant expression in cinema of the long-lasting, patient and persistent love of a husband and a wife for each other.  Carl and Ellie loved each other deeply.  They completed each other.  They stuck with each other, through the good times and the bad.  Their story truly is beautiful, yet sharply bittersweet.

Pixar has once again hit it out of the proverbial park and I cannot encourage you enough to go see this film.

“Ni ceart go cur le cheile” – “There is no strength without unity”

There is a scene in Pixar’s “A Bug’s Life” where the evil villains, the Grasshoppers, are chilling under their sombrero hangout when Hopper, the gang’s ringleader, hears grumbling about going back to Ant Island to gather “The Offering” from the puny ants.  Hopper jumps over to the bar in typical grasshopper fashion, grabs a seed from their large seed dispenser at the Grasshopper bar and throws it at the complaining party.  He asks the guilty one if it hurt (it did not), throws another seed (“are you kidding” being the response) and then releases the whole bunch of heavy seeds onto the whiner, crushing him.  The moral of this story?  “There was that ant who stood up to me … if one ant stands up, they all might stand up”.

Just as that one seed did not hurt the grasshopper, so Flick (that one brave ant) did not stand a chance alone.  Yet, Hopper knew something profound: if those thousands of ants in that colony decided to stand together, as one, unified (which they finally did) then his evil reign of terror would end (which it did).

Unity is a powerful thing.  One strand of string is easily broken, but if you were to twist dozens of strings together into a rope, that string would suddenly be much more difficult to break.  One vote is hardly enough to swing an election (usually), but if you get a majority to vote the same way, as one unified voice, then democratic power can and does assert itself.  Yet, unity is not simply about numbers.  There might be thousands of soldiers fighting in a battle, but if those thousands are not fighting for a unified purpose or goal and do not fight as one, then they are easily dispatched.

Just as unity is vital for ants, strings, voters and warriors, it is so for followers of Jesus as well.  We are one body, in Christ.  The Church, Jesus’ Bride, is not made up of a bunch of self-autonomous parts.  We are joined and knit together, a unified, redeemed Body.  Yet, “unity” can be, and in our pluralisticly philosophical and cultural milieu, often is, misleading.  Believers in Christ cannot be unified with those who deny the insanely radical and thoroughly exclusive nature of Christ and the Cross.  Believers in Jesus cannot be unified with those who call Jesus a god but who do not ultimately bow their collective knee in abject submission to the Lamb.  Believers in the very Son of God cannot be united with those who deny the everlasting Love of Jesus and Grace of God.  Yet, with true believers and followers of Jesus, the Christian IS unified and this unity finds it strength not in the collective might of those unified but in the One who is the Great Unifier.  This unity and strength is for His Glory and for our Good.  It is not just strong, it is everlasting.

I love me some Pixar and I can’t wait to see this one.