LIFE of the PARTY
How Pixar’s Day of the Dead-themed ‘Coco’ celebrates Mexican culture and pushes back against ‘state of fear’
Gael García Bernal, one of the stars of the new Pixar animated film “Coco,” is tapping his feet rhythmically and singing “shak-a-ta-ka-ka- shak-a-taka-ka” to give me a taste of a type of traditional Mexican music.
“It’s a beautiful type of music called son jarocho, and I enjoy playing it,” he explains, noting the folk tune “La Bamba” is a classic example of the style.
“It comes from the Caribbean part of Mexico around Veracruz, and it is done with small guitars (jaranas). You can get 30 people playing those little guitars. It is an incredible syncretic mixture of rhythms — African, indigenous American, and European,” he says.
Though the Mexican actor plays a famed conductor on the Amazon series “Mozart in the Jungle,” which is returning in December, and can play guitar, he does not consider himself a proper musician.
“I know how to play some chords and bang the drums really hard, but that’s about it,” the 38-year-old actor, who has two young children, says with a smile.
However, in the musically based “Coco,” opening today, Bernal even gets to sing a song (“Un Poco Loco”) as Hector, a mischievous skeletoned spirit from the Land of the Dead. The story revolves around 12-year-old Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez), a self-taught guitarist and singer whose family disapproves of music. The reasons why go back several generations to a split between his greatgreat grandparents.
When an attempt to make his mark at a music festival goes awry, Miguel finds himself at the cemetery on Mex-
ico’s Día de los Muertos when families go there to pay their respects to their ancestors.
Through a bit of magic, the boy is suddenly trapped in the Land of the Dead, and needs the blessing of an ancestor to release him. It’s then he meets Hector, who promises to help Miguel find Mexican musical legend Ernesto de la Cruz, who he believes may be his greatgreat-grandfather.
Co-director Lee Unkrich says the story he pitched for “Coco” to Pixar head John Lasseter in 2011 was quite different from the one that ended up on screen. Originally, it was to be about a Mexican-American boy who headed south to forget a family tragedy, but as Unkrich, producer Darla K. Anderson, and co-director Adrian Molina visited Mexico and did research they saw that Day of the Dead celebrations were about never forgetting family.
“So we kind of scraped the whole thing down to the foundation and started over again,” Unkrich says. “At that point, though, we were very invested in the research and felt confident about telling a story about a Mexican family that took place in Mexico. We really wanted it to embrace themes of family while making music a big part of it.”
Early on, the filmmakers turned to the Oscar- and Grammy-winning, married songwriting team of Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, who were behind the music of “Frozen.” They wrote “Coco’s” signature song, “Remember Me.”
“So much unfolds on the of Day of the Dead,” says Molina, “that we knew that the storytelling was going to depend on music to get Miguel through his journey. We really wanted to lean into all the different styles of traditional Mexican music just to lend the story a sense of history.”
Unkrich looked to an unlikely model for how to do a film with music that wasn’t a breakout-into-song-style musical: The Coen Brothers’ 2000 film, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
“I appreciated that it embraced very specific genres of traditional music and storytelling,” says the director, “and so we looked for every opportunity that we could to have music performance be part of the film.”
While Pixar is known for breakthroughs in computer-generated animation, Unkrich says “Coco” is less about technology and more about its overall look. It is eye-catchingly colorful and richly textured with plenty of zippy, fun moments, but a lot of the story takes place in the Land of the Dead populated by skeletons.
“At first, we thought it would be easy because skeletons are people without the meat on them,” says Unkrich, “but it turned out to be an aesthetic problem. Like how are we were going to stylize the skeletons and make them appealing because we didn’t want them to be frightening?”
So the filmmakers decided to make them reflections of the people they once were so they would appear familiar. While still hard and bony, they would also be flexible in their movements.
That was just one of the difficulties in creating Miguel’s journey through the Land of the Dead. “We had this grand vision for what we wanted, but it was very detailed,” says Unkrich, “like crowds of skeletons that needed to have clothing on. So the real challenge was layer upon layer of complexity.”
Bernal says he hadn’t been interested in his own family history, but “Coco” has piqued his curiosity. “I have never thought about it, but I’m beginning to wonder about the story of my ancestors.”
Growing up in Mexico, the actor found the Day of the Dead to be more of a cultural experience rather than a religious one, “which makes it more spiritual, actually. It is a very open, generous celebration.”
“I think ‘Coco’ puts out a really profound question, which is our relationship with death,” he says. “Through the music and the mythology, the Day of the Dead is something that is incredibly transversal and universal — everyone can relate to it. It opens up a certain kind of appreciation for life, and I think it sparks goodwill.”
Bernal, who like many in the cast is of Mexican heritage, hopes the film will knock down some stereotypes.
“If I could dedicate this film to anybody, it would be to the kids in the United States whose parents, grandparents, great-grandparents came from Latin America and Mexico because many of them are growing up in a state of fear, really,” says the actor, referring to negative portrayals of those from Latin countries in the media and by politicians.
“We really need to tackle those accusations, and for these kids to know their cultural background is much more complex and much more profound than anyone can argue in 140 characters.”