Since the studio first broke onto the scene twenty years ago with industry revolutionizing Toy Story, Pixar has continually established itself as a reliable source of sweet, funny, and thoughtful entertainment for all ages. A quick look through their back catalog of classic, beloved films sees some of the most original and clever ideas for worlds and stories put to screen. But the Pixar way is not only to simply use these ideas as mere surface level garnishes for the story, but for them to serve as a jumping off point for exploring incredibly complex facets of human existence. And with Inside Out, they may have delivered their most deceptively simple but complex film yet.
Inside Out takes us inside the mind of a young girl named Riley, where we find a control room run by five core emotions: Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear, and Anger. Together, these five emotions dictate Riley’s thoughts and actions in everyday life. Joy, Riley’s first emotion, is very clearly in charge, with Disgust, Fear, and Anger looking to her for guidance and direction. In this setup, Joy tries to keep Riley as happy as possible…which also means keeping Sadness away from the control panel. Things are going great, until one day, Riley’s family moves from her home in Minnesota to San Francisco. Transplanted to an unfamiliar place with no friends, and seemingly no happiness, Joy tries to keep things under control as Sadness’ influence becomes increasingly difficult to avoid and ignore. Things go catostrophically wrong, and Joy and Sadness find themselves lost in the depths of Riley’s memories. While the remaining emotions do their best to keep things under control (and fail hilariously), Joy and Sadness have to find their way back to the control room before Riley is changed forever.
From the outset, it’s staggering how much thought and creativity has gone into building the world of Riley’s mind. The film is littered with little in-jokes regarding how the mind works, from the core memories that form Riley’s personality to smaller insights regarding the confusion of fact and opinion. While not fully accurate, it’s close enough that the film serves as a very strong tool in teaching kids about their emotions, how they work, and how to deal with them. But adults can learn a lot from it too. Oh, so much.
Though the other emotions are incredibly important, and there are great insights regarding them added into the film (watch for when Disgust tries to imitate happiness, resulting in sarcasm), the key focus of the film revolves around Joy and Sadness, and therein lies much of the film’s thought and insight. At the beginning of the film, Joy doesn’t know what to do with Sadness. She, by nature, seems to be Joy’s opposite, and therefore is bad. So for much of Riley’s life, up until the events of the film, Sadness is pushed to the side and thought to be best forgotten. This reflects a number of attitudes prevalent in our society; people should always try to be happy, positive, and not be sad.
But something interesting happens. With all the big changes going on, Sadness accidentally encroaches more and more on the operations of Riley’s mind. As this happens, Joy becomes more and more desperate to fix things, and, at the same time, more and more ineffective at doing so. Meanwhile, Sadness reinforces to herself the notion of uselessness she’s been fed by the other emotions forever, but finds herself able to fix problems that Joy couldn’t.
At one point, the duo meet Riley’s old imaginary friend, Bing Bong, arguably the best character of a film already packed with great characters. Bing Bong eventually comes to realize that Riley does not care about him anymore, and that he has been forgotten. He breaks down in near tears. Joy tries to cheer him up, as they need him to take him to the Train of Thought (another great joke), but is unsuccessful. Sadness then sits down and, in her droll voice, is able to relate and empathize with him. And they cry together; after they’re done, Bing Bong gets up and they continue on their way.
Scenes like this point to the true nature of Sadness in general; it is a gateway to empathy, and a signal that we need help. It’s a way to tell people that things aren’t okay, and that we need someone to understand that. And while that in itself may not fix the problems, having someone understand what you’re feeling more often then not helps bear the load. And in that, we as people come out stronger in the end. It’s how we grow. Another one of the film’s chief emotional peaks comes at the climax, when Riley cries with her parents and shares what she’s feeling, the Family Island personality trait, previously destroyed after the core memories were removed, not only returns, but comes back even bigger than before.
And it goes even deeper than that. We may perceive Joy and Sadness at opposite ends of the spectrum of emotion, but the film continually demonstrates that the two are connected stronger than any other emotion, and it does so so subtly that I didn’t even pick up on it until a second viewing. To demonstrate my point, take a look at the character designs below:
Each character is color-coded, as expected, since from a young age we’re taught to associate emotions with specific colors. In addition, each one is wearing clothes that either match the color of their skin/personality or are neutral in tone. This leads to an overall singular look to every character…except for Joy, who has blue hair that contrasts vibrantly with her yellow gleam. Yet blue is the color we associate with Sadness….
Let’s come back to that.
Now I want to ask you something: what is Joy? Many of you would say it is synonymous with happiness, and while the two often go hand in hand, however, they are not the same thing. In the words of Pastor Rick Warren, as informed by the biblical definition of the term, Joy is “the quiet confidence that everything is going to be alright.” From this, we see that Joy has more to do with contentment than with outright happiness.
Throughout the film, Joy and the other emotions constantly talk about “keeping Riley happy.” That is all Joy talks about 90% of the film. And for a while, I thought that the film and its creators didn’t fully understand what Joy is; that maybe they got it wrong. And then I saw that blue hair, and I realized: maybe it’s just Riley who doesn’t understand what joy is.
For most of our childhood, and even as we grow up and move on to adulthood, our lives revolve around trying to be happy, and people forget what it means to merely be content. In Joy, we see what a perpetually ‘happy’ person ends up being: grating on the nerves, coming off as desperate, unwilling to face truth and hard problems. But joy, true contentment, comes as a result of the sadness, which in itself is accepting and facing the problems head on. And through this process, we are able to be okay with the way things happen, and know that they will probably turn out alright.
There are times when we are going to be happy. There are times when we are going to be sad too. And the best thing to do is to let it come. In the end, you’ll get through it, and you will find yourself able to experience true Joy.
And that is where life – maturity, relationships, growth; all the good things – happens.
Final Rating: 5/5 – A Masterpiece
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