by G. E. Uke, Reporter

When I set out to watch Elemental, I wasn’t expecting much. Obviously the basic premise involved a girl made of fire and a boy made of water (I saw the poster), so I assumed it had something to do with ethnic mixing and overcoming racism. And it did. But I had no notion of the raw depth of emotion it contained, or how eloquently it portrayed the topics it set out to cover. In the end, I was very impressed. Here is why:

Whenever Pixar sets out to create a new movie, they follow a certain formula. First they identify a point of conflict or suffering within the human condition, and then they set out to weave a story that exposes and overcomes the issue in a wholesome and socially just way. The defining element of each Pixar movie is that there’s always a “slice” of the population that experiences a sort of wishful catharsis when they watch it. The reason for this catharsis is threefold. First, it offers people hope by showing a problem they can relate to being resolved in an emotionally healthy manner. Second, it sends a powerful message that they are not alone in the world. Third, it gives OTHER people who don’t share the same life conditions an intimate view of what it’s like to be in someone elses shoes. This encourages empathy and compassion. 

That said, Elemental is easily the best Pixar movie I’ve seen over a decade. It is a smart, funny, brilliantly written film about cultural mixing. It validates love between people of different ethnic backgrounds, and it exposes the generational challenges facing immigrant families who come to a new country with nothing and try to build a new life. It also gently dismantles the more toxic elements of Pan-Asian filial piety, without attacking or discrediting the parental love and cultural values which drive it. Make no mistake, this is a tall order. There are a million ways to mess this up, and alienate the very cultures to which this movie was supposed to reach out. 

Elemental fills the order well. It does not mess this up. 

Ember is a first generation immigrant whose parents own a shop in a major city where “fire” people represent a discriminated minority. The discrimination is low-key (there are no ethnic cleansing campaigns going on), but it is still present enough that fire immigrants segregate themselves into closed communities. Ember endures considerable pressure from her loving parents to take over the shop and fill her ailing fathers shoes, but being raised in Element City has created a generation gap she struggles to reconcile. When the shop is accidentally damaged on her watch she meets a water elemental named Wade, and their tumultuous interaction blossoms into an awkward romance her parents would not approve of. The conflict of the movie centers around guilt: will she sacrifice a wholesome life partner and a career in glassblowing to live the life her parents have laid out for her? Is living for herself and following her own path a betrayal of her family’s sacrifices? Looking around at the audience, I could see all the first generation Asians in the theater wincing as this story hit them right in the feels. Including my own wife and daughter.  

The voice acting in Elemental is excellent. The action follows Ember (Leah Lewis, aka Ellie Chu from The Half of It) and Wade (Mamoudou Athie, aka Dan Turner from Archive 81) very closely, so they do about 60% of the talking in the movie. Both are fantastic. You can really feel the emotion in Leah’s voice when she portrays Ember, particularly because her own life-story allows her to relate to this character (she is Chinese). Mamoudou is hilarious in his portrayal of Wade as an emotionally sensitive water elemental who, despite being a massive cryer, also manages to NOT come off as weak or insecure. I think Wade’s family is supposed to have “European” roots? Either way, it’s a stoic “Asian” girl getting together with a hyper-emotional “European” guy, and the interplay between them is adorable. A special shout out also goes to Ember’s father Bernie Lumen (Ronnie del Carmen, aka the astral projecting mystic Windstar from Soul), whose grumpy old Asian dad routine deserves a medal of some sort. 

Rating:
ComicsOnline gives Elemental 5/5 stars, both for its entertainment value and for its general contribution to the audience’s humanity. 

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