A grand adventure

Image courtesy Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, UK

Carl Fredricksen (voice of Ed Asner) is a white-haired widower with an appetite for adventure. As children, Carl and his best friend Ellie (voice of Elie Docter) were inspired by Charles Muntz (voice of Christopher Plummer), a famous but discredited world explorer. Wanting to follow in his footsteps, Ellie makes Carl promise that they will live at the top of Paradise Falls in South America. Carl and Ellie get married and grow old together. They build a home, try for a baby and enjoy a full life devoted to each other, but Ellie never makes it to Paradise Falls. Some time after her death, on the eve of being forced out of his house and into a retirement community, Carl determines to honour his promise. He attaches thousands of helium balloons to his house and sails south in it. The adventure seems to be going to plan until Carl discovers a stowaway on his porch: Russell (voice of Jordan Nagai), an eight-year-old Wilderness Explorer wanting to earn his ‘assisting the elderly’ badge. Adventures that neither Carl nor Russell have dreamt of await their arrival in the wilds of South America.

This immersive adventure will have you rolling in the aisles and reaching for the tissues. It is at once an exciting tale of powerful dreams and daring exploits, and two beautiful love stories detailing a life-long romance and a surprising friendship. Its subtlety, wit and warmth are spellbinding. Rotten Tomatoes records that out of 216 critical reviews, an astounding 210 were positive. In America, it has become the second-highest-grossing Pixar film after Finding Nemo. The ambitions of the principal characters are uplifting and inspiring. This is what Ed Asner admires most about his character, Carl: ‘He dreams beautiful dreams, and he’s willing to fight the dogs of society to maintain them.’[1] The film not only shows us people realising their dreams, it also questions which dreams are worth fighting for.

Since Ellie’s death, Carl’s aim, it seems, has been to live a quiet life. In fact, the boundaries of his life have narrowed so dramatically that they fit into the four walls of his house. Carl’s routine is simple: at 6.00 am the alarm sounds; he gets out of bed and cracks his back into place before making the slow progression down the stairs on a stair lift, doing the chores and getting ready to leave the house. Then he opens the door (a feat in itself with half a dozen locks) and sits on the porch. Despite the fact that his house is now in the centre of a building site and he is repeatedly pestered about selling it, his stubborn nature renders him immovable. One would imagine that being a spectator is adventure enough for a man of Carl’s age and physique, but when he faces eviction from his home he decides he is equal to a greater adventure. Although this involves him flying off to explore South America, this dream still looks a little small since Carl plans to literally travel the whole way without leaving the comfort of his own home. Carl’s journey epitomises our desire for adventures without risk and our settling for dreams that can be pursued from the confines of our comfort zone.

Carl’s mission is fixed: he wants to get the house to Paradise Falls to fulfil his promise to Ellie. The first time Carl meets Russell (whilst his house is still on the ground), he is eager to get rid of the boy so he can return to the peace and quiet of his armchair, which still sits beside Ellie’s armchair. Once the house takes off, protecting it remains Carl’s first priority and Russell is frequently left to fend for himself. The house lands close to Paradise Falls, but not quite close enough. So Carl takes Russell up on his offer of assistance, not to cross a road but to drag the still-floating house to its final destination, a three-day trip by foot. Russell finds the journey tedious, but every animal they meet along the way, enthralling. He quickly adopts a huge tropical bird which he names Kevin and a talking dog called Dug (voice of Bob Peterson). To Carl, these creatures are unnecessary disruptions to his mission, much like Russell. Carl only allows Kevin and Dug to stay with them because he cannot outrun them.

Image courtesy Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, UK

Whilst Carl is at times single-minded to a fault, Charles Muntz is doggedly so. About seventy years ago, Muntz travelled to Paradise Falls in search of adventure and brought back the skeleton of a creature never before seen. When the skeleton was denounced as a fake, Muntz vowed to go back to Paradise Falls and return only once he’d captured a live creature. Carl encounters his childhood hero still tracking the creature, which sounds remarkably like Kevin. Muntz lives with a large pack of dogs. He has fitted each of them with a collar that translates their thoughts into words, but instead of using them for company, he enlists them to scout out the area and serve him dinner. As a young man, Muntz devoted himself to the defence of his reputation, and he has spent the rest of his life chasing that dream at the expense of everything else. Seeing what kind of man Muntz has become opens Carl’s eyes to the emptiness of a life lived in pursuit of self-centred conquests. Carl’s steely resolve to get to Paradise Falls is further softened as he watches and marvels at Russell’s devotion to Kevin.

Russell’s idea of adventure is much broader than Carl’s. It is expansive enough to include other people and even their dreams. When Muntz eventually manages to capture Kevin, Russell gives up his dream of getting a badge for helping Carl. In fact he throws off his Wilderness Explorer sash complete with all his current badges, and flies after Muntz armed only with a leaf blower and a bucket load of courage. Slowly it dawns on Carl that Russell’s open-ended adventure is more worthy than his own, that Russell is more precious than all his possessions put together, and that Ellie meant for him to pursue new adventures, not be bound by one of hers. Carl has to let go of (in fact throw out) all his possessions in order to make the house buoyant enough to fly after Russell. The experience liberates Carl and thrusts him into an adventure that achieves nothing for him, but everything for Russell, Kevin and Dug. Suddenly the house becomes the means of adventure, merely a vehicle in his rescue mission.

In Up, a life lived for others opens up a new world of adventures. Although Ellie’s classic dream of an adventure in an exotic wilderness is never fulfilled, she regarded her marriage as her great adventure. Dug believes that being an ordinary man’s friend is a greater adventure than being a famous man’s minion. Russell treasures the simple the simple activities he used to do with his father over and above the excitements of wilderness exploring: ‘It might sound boring but I think the boring stuff is the stuff I remember the most.’ Carl’s adventure undergoes several revisions until eventually it revolves around the safety and happiness of Russell. In this he finds a new lease of life and an adventure worth leaving the house for.

Perhaps if we were to treat all of life like an adventure, full of moments to be treasured, obstacles to be tackled and opportunities to be heroic, we’d experience something of the joy and satisfaction this film is bursting with. The story of Carl’s life begs the question: what constitutes a life well spent? The film answers its own question: a life that looks up and out, that stretches beyond itself to help others. The Bible says that God created people because his love was like this. He desired to give life and adventure and love to us. Because he made us to live like him, our desire to do something great with our lives coincides with our desire to have loving relationships. It is his desire that we discover the satisfaction of loving others and loving him. Could this be the adventure of our lives? Could this be what we are here for?

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