Movie Background/Introduction
Coco is a 2017 award-winning animated film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. The original idea of the film was given by Lee Unkrich, and it was directed by himself. Due to Coco’s impressive plot portraying Mexican’s rich heritage which greatly celebrates the Mexican culture, Coco became one of the highest-grossing films of all-time in Mexico and appeared top 20 as the highest-grossing animated film ever in the history.
The movie plot shows a 12-year-old Mexican young boy, Miguel who has a strong passion towards music and lives with his family of shoemakers including his great-grandmother, Coco in Santa Cecilia, Mexico. Bound by his grandmother rules of banishing the practice of music in the household, Miguel secretly dreams of becoming an accomplished musician like his idol, Ernesto de la Cruz, a deceased entertainment legend and famous singer of Coco’s generation. An unpredicted incident gave Miguel a huge discovery. Miguel found Coco’s family photo and recognizes Ernesto’s guitar in the picture although the face of Coco’s father is torn out in the picture. Miguel boldly assumes that Ernesto is his great-great-grandfather based on the clues and his music talent. To prove that, he sneaked out to enter a talent show on the Day of the Dead, ignoring his grandmother, Elena’s objection.
Unfortunately, Miguel’s rash decision of ‘borrowing’ Ernesto’s guitar from the mausoleum for the talent show transported him to the astonishing and colourful Land of the Dead, as he became invisible to everyone in the village and met all his skeletal dead relatives. His relatives knew that Miguel was cursed for ‘stealing’ from the deceased. To undo the curse placed upon him, Miguel must receive a blessing from a family member using an orange, glittering Aztec marigold petal before sunrise or he will be a member of the dead forever, without turning back. . In the end, Miguel’s family accepts both him and music back into the family when he successfully returns to the Land of the Living. After the passing of Coco, letters kept by Coco which contain evidence of Ernesto’s crimes are discovered. As a result, the community honors Héctor, instead and Ernesto’s legacy is utterly destroyed and humiliated.
Impact and Influence on society
( Discussion )
The most fascinating thing about “Coco ” is this film has instilled the message on the importance of cherishing our family members , living and dead , which impacts and influences to the society
In this hustle and bustle modern city that we are subsisting , we as a human being are often forgot to spend quality time with our family , to celebrate their special days or even forgot about their birthday .
In fact , we always seen people eyeing on their mobile phone during their family gathering or dinner instead of having conversation with their family members .
Nowadays , we always hear people sharing nothing is more important than family. Towards the end of the movie , theres one scene showing that Miguel’s ancestor tells him that we should never forget how much your family loves you . Therefore , the film has successfully delivered a prominent message on cherishing the moment with family members and remembering our deceased ancestors are both equally important .
Those who have passed have left us something which rooted us , those who are still living have brought us up and implanted loves to us which made us who we are now
In another way , Miguel has shown us his characteristics of being fearless to seek for the truth and chase for your dreams which are needed to instil on us. As being a part university students , we often get lost on being distracted by materialistic , afraid to apply for the post that you desired or even afraid to voice out . What if Miguel did not seek for the truth and return to the living land ? He might not know who is the real great grandfather in the end . As we often said that “ never try never know ” , so we should’ve be fearless as Miguel in order to break the obstacles which are blocking our way to our bright future It’s Never Too Late To Forgive. Unforgiveness affects the person much more than the person is holding a grudge. It eats you insides. Through the film, we know that Miguel’s grandmother, Imelda held a significant grudge towards his grandfather, Hector even afterlife. The grudge has causes Hector may be forgotten forever. As this reminds us that its never too late to forgive someone no matter how much time has passed. And is never too late to forgive our past, as there is always a time when you have to let go of everything in order to makes you feel ease. Just because someone die, doesn’t mean that we should stop loving them
Mass comm theory :
Culture Approach
The movie “Coco” has brought and portrayed traditional festival , Day of Dead , the Mexican culture into the movie itself . It truly shows the understanding , devotion and embracement on own traditional culture to honours the deceased family members . The movie is rooted in the spirit of the celebration, on family and destiny, on one’s originality and provides dignified insight into the connections that bind family between life, death and all things in between . Doubtless , “Coco ” centres on the importance celebration and embracement on the traditional cultures which has been inherited from our ancestors .
Sound and musical Effects
The sound and musical effects are spectacular on the movie “Coco ” . The film itself has a strong centres on the music . For instance , one of the soundtrack “Remember Me”one of Ernesto de la Cruz’s songs, has a significant message on the Mexican old Hollywood song . Furthermore , the film has divided the music into three categories which are the score, source music and original songs which brought different insights . In conclusion , “Coco” revolves completely around music as Miguel’s dream revolves around musics so does his great-great grandfather and this is where their connection began . From all above , it is important that this movie gets the music right to honour the story, and to honour the culture that it draws from.
Technique used :
In the movie Coco, which mainly revolves around the Day of the Dead, the bridge of marigold petals was the highlight of the movie. It was filled with brilliant orange colour , which represent the family bond in the Mexican Culture. The director of photography lightning, Danielle Feinberg brilliantly used the concept of the marigold petals as light sources. The special effects team made it so that when someone steps on the petals, the petals will glow and emits spots of light. While the outer portion of the bridge shows that the petals are gradually falling. The effect is made with a set of lights and shading which showed how the petals shines on and off throughout the bridge.
The team wanted to show a vivacious Land of Dead and project as many Mexican cultural references as possible. They wanted to show that it is always night in the Land of the Dead, so the team shot with 7 million lights to illuminate the town, the lights of the plazas. The buildings, headlights construction cranes, or even the street lights. They challenged themselves using innovative visual effects to ensure that the whole Land was lit up based only on the lights they placed.
The bright colours of mythical spirit animals to the detailed etches in the faces of every skull in the movie showed how the staff took tremendous effort to put in tiny details that people might not even notice into every second of the movie.
Recommendations
1. As this is a PG rated movie, the illustrator should have keep in mind that there may be children below age of 3 watching this movie together with parents’ guidance.
Therefore, the illustrations in this movie should be more children friendly.
– the dead people, skeletons and the scary faces should not be so scary
– should refer to children psychologist regarding the visuals and get approval from them
– prevent children’s bad first impression towards the movie
– prevent children from getting scared and having nightmares
– the giant snarling tiger may be creative, but the visuals of the tiger and the size of the tiger should be acceptable for children especially the sensitive children
– murder scene in this movie should not be so cruel
So that kids can enjoy this movie and not get nightmares after that.
2. Murder, Violence, Intense, Alcohol scenes should not be included in a kid movie
– bad example/influence to kids
– they will learn to murder or destroy their competitors in order to succeed in life
– children will learn to be violent to solve problems
– shocking & frightening for kids, nightmares
– may educate children wrongly
– Scene: a character is crushed by a giant ball; theft of a guitar from a mausoleum; breaking and entering; a head pops off of a dead character; an eyeball falls into a character’s mouth; a character had murdered someone, so he could steal someone’s artistic creations; a skeleton is decapitated; A character drinks a shot, and characters drink and sing; A character remembers a night that involved drinking, followed by waking up dead.
Conclusion
On the whole, Pixar’s latest offering Coco is a breath of fresh air in the animated movie universe.Coco is a stunning achievement from the most consistently impressive animation studio in the business. Coco delivers heart-warming storytelling and eye-catching visuals, all the while honouring the power of family and music. The filmmakers “captured” a living story, made it their own and gave it to the world. There’s an authenticity to the scenes in Miguel’s Mexican town and a reverence for the traditions that makes Coco a refreshingly respectful portrayal of the culture. On paper, the mythology scans as complicated and dark, but in the capable hands of Academy Award winner Lee Unkrich and Pixar veteran Adrian Molina, Coco is accessible for even the youngest cinema patrons. Once you get to the land of the dead it is beautiful, both in story as well as animation. The animation is so good in this movie. The film has a galloping rhythm, and the animation is scrupulous and ravishing, from its smallest details to its limitless landscapes. Coco manages its humour and music in exact doses, not transforming the story with them, but by using them as an expressive material to continue advancing Miguel’s journey. It requires a lot of exposition but it’s well done and once complete, this gloriously animated, musically lovely and supremely Mexican visual feast flies along. It’s certainly a substantial improvement on recent misfires like The Good Dinosaur and last year’s barrel-scraping Cars 3.