I used to adore Pixar. Lately, though, the studio seems to be wheezing through a rough patch. New hits have been hard to come by. So what about this latest offering from Disney & Pixar—can it turn the tide?
The heroine of this film is Mabel, a college student. She chooses to become a beaver not out of environmental duty, nor from some grand creed of animal rights. No, her reason is more personal, more urgent than that: she learns that the beloved forest where she made treasured memories with her grandmother is about to disappear beneath a highway construction project.
This is the crucial point. The engine of this movie is not the abstract banner of “saving nature,” but something painfully concrete and small: memories of her grandmother. The sort of thing everyone probably carries somewhere inside them—that place, that smell, that person’s voice. It is nostalgia of that kind that hurls one young woman into a beaver robot. That the story begins from something so human gives the film its dignity.
Mabel, an ardent animal lover, uses a device invented by scientists that transfers human consciousness into robotic animals, and “hops” into a beaver model. At first she bursts with delight as she interacts with the creatures of the forest. But soon she is confronted with the severe laws of nature.
The animal kingdom, despite all its fluffy appearances, runs on the merciless logic of eat or be eaten. The romantic image Mabel had projected onto the forest is quickly chewed to pieces by reality’s sharp teeth.
But then the film takes one more admirable step forward. It refuses the easy comfort of self-righteousness. Believing unilaterally that you are right is dangerous. Mabel realizes she, too, understood nothing about the animals. Through regret, failure, and repeated mistakes, she tries to build relationships with them on equal footing. There is learning there. There is growth. She discovers firsthand how perilous it is to think that anything is justified so long as it is done “for the forest.”
Director Daniel Chong has said he drew inspiration from Isao Takahata’s Pom Poko (ah, memories!). You can feel it. The film squarely depicts the friction between humanity and nature, yet refuses to condemn either side as pure villain. That honesty toward complexity gives the story its depth.
The memories of Grandma are the film’s point of departure—but, in truth, also its destination. When people try to protect a cherished place, they often realize that what they are really trying to preserve is the relationship that place once held. What Mabel ultimately learns is not a methodology for conservation, but the patient persistence required to understand the other side.
That, perhaps, is something inherited from Grandma too.
複数の批評家がピクサーにとっての「原点回帰」と評した本作。笑いと冒険の皮を借りながら、その核心には、誰かへの愛から始まる小さな行動が世界をどう変えうるかという、古くて新しい問いが静かに宿っている。ピクサーの面目躍如と言えるだろう。
