PIXAR JOURNEYS TO THE AFTERLIFE
Studio took great pains to avoid Mexican clichés, stereotypes
Pixar films have never been shy about death. The Toy Story films are, in part, about mortality. The poetic highlight of Up is a wordless sequence of a spouse’s passing. The Earth itself was left for dead in WALL-E.
But Pixar plunges fully into the afterlife in Coco, a brightly coloured fable surrounding the Mexican holiday Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead).
The imagery of skeletons and graves in a kids’ movie might have put off other animation studios. But director Lee Unkrich (Toy Story 3, Monsters, Inc.) envisioned a film about family heritage and keeping alive the memories of deceased loved ones so they aren’t, as he says, “just fading photos in an album.”
Coco is Pixar’s first feature film with a minority lead character, and one of the largest U.S. productions ever to feature an almost entirely Latino cast. That makes it something of a landmark event, one that has already set box office records in Mexico, where it opened several weeks early.
But it also took a lot of homework and a lot of outreach for Pixar to convince Latinos that the production wasn’t just big-budget cultural appropriation. Such fears spiked when Disney tried to trademark “Dia de los Muertos” (the term more often used among U.S. Latinos) in 2013. After a backlash, the studio abandoned the effort.
Charting a different path, Pixar brought in cultural consultants, including playwright Octavio Solis and cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz, who had been critical of the trademark bid. Unkrich retailored the film’s approach, doubling down on efforts to create an authentic celebration of Mexican folklore, traditions and music.
“We took every pain that we could along the way to surround ourselves with cultural consultants, to spend a lot of time in Mexico, specifically embedding ourselves with Mexican families down there,” Unkrich says. “I knew that there would be a fear that we were going to lapse into cliché and stereotype and so we did everything we could to not let that happen.”
It also meant pivoting from Unkrich’s initial idea, which centred on a Mexican-American boy who travels to his family in Mexico for the first time. In that treatment, the young protagonist is trying to get over the grief of a loss.
“It was born out of the fact that I’m not Latino myself. I’m American and that was at the time my natural entrance into a story,” Unkrich says. “We realized that thematically was antithetical to what Dia de los Muertos is also about, which is this obligation to never forget, to never let go. We at that point had an epiphany that we were making the film as outsiders.”
“It didn’t really embrace the DNA of the holiday, which is not letting go of but staying connected to,” says Darla K. Anderson, a veteran Pixar producer. “When we realized that, we definitely pivoted to embrace more of the connected nature of Dia de los Muertos.”
Adrian Molina, an animator on other Pixar films, serves as co-director and helped steer the script.
“Growing up Mexican-American, I know the transformative power that seeing yourself represented onscreen has,” Molina says. “My hope is for anyone who’s a small Latino or Latina kid and sees this film that has an impact on how they see themselves. And if you’re coming from a different experience, recognizing the fact that there’s Latino and Latina heroes and the beauty of a Mexican family.”
Hispanics are one of the largest demographics of regular U.S. moviegoers, yet they are seldom catered to. They last year accounted for 23 per cent of frequent moviegoers in the U.S. and Canada, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.
Mexican music, too, plays a central role in the film. Composer Michael Giacchino (Up, Ratatouille) collaborated with Mexican-American composer Germaine Franco. A research team was dispatched to Mexico City to bring back musical styles from throughout the country. And DJ and producer Camilo Lara served as musical consultant.
The whole production, from Unkrich’s initial pitch to completion, took six years — a time that included changes outside the filmmaker’s control.
Donald Trump’s presidency has put strains on U.S.-Mexico relations, as has his ambitions to build a border wall.
“We think that we’ve built a bridge with this movie,” Unkrich says. “It’s a confusing world we live in right now and there’s a lot of negativity but I think we all feel honoured and grateful that we’re able to put something positive into the world that’s hopeful and will hopefully do its own part to erode the artificial barriers we put between us.”
I knew that there would be a fear that we were going to lapse into cliché and stereotype and so we did everything we could to not let that happen