COCO : Watch, Enjoy, Ponder, Learn, Worth It!

Animation films have a way of making deep philosophical commentary, using simple story line and a premise relying on fantasy. Surprisingly, the same fantasy poses an important question for us the the viewer

Wall-E

Wall-E did it with a simple plot, humorous gags, exciting climax, and yet under all that it posed an important question, What is the nature of feelings? We grapple with feelings and emotions like love, loss etc and naturally assume them to be a feature of “human” existence, we are charitable to extend these emotions to animals, mostly pets, and assume or presume that animals reciprocate feelings back to us. Our understanding of emotions in the animal world is undergoing a scientific evaluation, as we decode whether maternal love and protection towards an infant is deep or is just a chemical instinct embedded by evolution. Wall-E turned this question up many levels, as the journey of Wall-E “a robot” is full of the emotional pitfalls of love, attachment, grief. Upon reflection the question that we face is -“what is the true nature of feelings or emotions”, feelings are things which we naturally attribute to that which we classify as “living”, do they transcend the living? and can they be experienced by a robot?, clearly by our definition -“non living”.  An important question, as we stare at the rise of Artificial Intelligence.
Similar question was explored by Blade Runner in a dark dystopian manner, and Wall-E did it with a light hearted note!

What is existence?

When I finished watching Coco, the key takeaway for me, was this question. What defines our existence? Is it purely the physical manifestation that we have, or is the idea of us something beyond that. When do we die!, when our physical existence on this planet is done with, or after that. On the surface, this question seems to be about the ‘after-life’, and the central plot of the movie revolves around this theme, of the after life. However the key point in the movie is when, a character in the after life fades away and disappears, and then Hector proclaims, ‘we truly die, when there is no one left to remember us in the real world’. When there is no one to remember us, when we do not even ‘live’ in the memories of someone else. That is the time when we truly stop existing, both as a physical entity as well as an idea.
similar to the Mexican tradition depicted in the film, Hindu tradition is filled with concepts of ‘remembering the dead’, a particular person on their ‘death anniversary’ or varsha shraddha , beyond that there is a tradition of remembering all dead ancestors, paying respects to all ancestors, pitra pandhravada , In a way they still live in our memories!.
The film goes even further, saying ‘eventually all fade away in the after life too’, as it is a fact that, four-five generations later a time will definitely come, when no matter the traditions, no matter all the family trees, books, historical documents, there will be a point when we will not even remain as a memory!!

Great Animation

The serious stuff is there, however it has been beautifully rendered in an animation, you can’t take your eyes off. The sequences are hilarious, bright colors, music, song, dance, emotions, so much so that the movie can easily pass off as a typical Bollywood masala film. The creators are super imaginative and exploit the idea of the after life, filled with bare bones dead people, to create amazing moments. Some lines are outright funny, ‘you don’t give a name to a street dog, otherwise you end up feeding him everyday..’, characters are well rounded, Dante is adorable, all of it means that movie is easy on the eye.

Digressing here as usual

An animation film, typically gets characterized as ‘ a cartoon’ film and hence attracts an audience of a lot of kids, (less than 7 yr old types, or maybe their parents choose ‘a cartoon’ film for them). The movie is too detailed with lots of conversations  for the kid’s mind to focus on, action is intermittent, and there are periods of lull wherein nothing ‘interesting’ is happening on the screen, and eventually the film falls off the limited attention span/sphere of the kid. Generally you will feel a knock on your chair, a random kid just running up and down the stairs, a brother and a sister rolling on the carpet in front of the screen!! A mixed bag of adorable distraction, which you can not do anything about! after all, whom are going complain to !