UP

Although I have never discounted the artistic value of animated films, until recently I haven't fully explored their potential. That appears to be changing.

I was deeply moved by Pixar's latest offering; moved by its lyrical grace, by its bittersweet tone, by its heartrending vulnerability, by its forthright sense of adventure. More and more, I am discovering in these films the capabilities of expressing sense and emotion beyond the scale of ordinary live-action cinematography... of taking their viewers to realms outside of typical imagination.

The famed Japanese playwright, Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725), who wrote primarily for the puppet theater, believed his dolls capable of transcending standard human emotion. He felt that because they were not human, they could actually express humanity in a pure form that human beings themselves could never attain. Is animation perhaps the successor to that philosophical viewpoint? UP (and other astonishing films I have seen recently) are beginning to convince me that it is.

This was easily the best film I've seen in ages; I can't wait to see it again.