Toy Story 3 is one of those handful of films I regret not having seen in theaters.
Movie poster here.
Our movie screen at home is either a laptop or an antiquated 19-inch TV. That's by design. The beloved went years without cable, and even now only allows herself a couple of "Househunters International" shows a week, along with, of course, "Pretty Little Liars" and "Glee."
Most of the time the small screen is not an issue. Last week, we saw the Humphrey Bogart film noir, "In a Lonely Place," and it was riveting. No need for Imax there.
But there is a scene in "Toy Story 3" that really cried out for total immersion. And that's why anyone who hasn't seen the film, but still wants to, should stop reading now.
At the climax of the film, our heroes Woody, Buzz, and Jesse have been dumped in a landfill and are about to be incinerated in a huge pile of shredded plastic. As they descend slowly to the fiery hell that is about to consume them, they all link hands in a final show of family solidarity.
It is probably the most scary moment in all three of the Toy Story flicks. Although this is America, and "Toy Story 3" is a G-rated movie, you're still kind of wondering whether this is it, whether the producers decided to melt down the characters as they shut down the franchise.
The rescue comes in the form, not of a deus ex machina, but rather a machina ex deo, and the happy ending is thereby assured. But I found myself wishing, in the moment of doom, that I had been in the movie theater, covered in the red glow of the incinerating fire, rather than just observing it from a distance on a tiny rectangle. I just felt something was missing to the experience.
Which is all to say that "Toy Story 3" is much more epic than the other 2 in scope (click here for my favorite moment in the trilogy). "Toy Story" has always been less loud and explosion-happy than most stuff done for kids, and that's to the good. It helps adults watch. And apparently that style helped the Academy nominate the film for a Best Picture award.
"Toy Story 3" is not Oscar-worthy-- a subject for another post-- though the series itself should win a special award for cinematic achievement and trailblazing. But it does touch a nerve in the current incarnation of the American ethos, something we are preoccupied with for some reason nowadays: the end of the world.
"Newsweek" ran it this week: a black-and-white photo of a tidal wave, with the big red headline, "Apocalypse Now." We've had a bad string of large natural disasters, the Middle East is on fire, and our economy is still struggling while gas prices are going through the roof. Some economist on NPR just said we might have less than 50 years of oil left.
So it's on everybody's mind: is this some kind of pattern? Is there a meteor around the corner? Are we in the last days?
That's how it felt in that hell moment in "Toy Story 3." The familiarity of the last 60 years, of everything we built after World War II, is in question. How we live, how we grow up, the cycle of life. It's as if our owner, our Andy, that is, our middle-class expectations for comfort and predictability, has grown up and is now going away to college-- to some unpredictable future, leaving us without a function or even a stable home.
It's natural that we should fear we are sliding into some psychic incinerator.
Sometimes I long for predictability. "In a Lonely Place" is about a Hollywood script writer in 1948. Even though Bogart's character is in chaos psychologically, there is that infrastructure around him of permanence. The movie business is forever. Los Angeles is forever. Love affairs will be there forever. And that was made only 3 years after the end of the big war that really was the end of the world for millions.
We do face an uncertain future. We've got to face it. And as I have written before and thought for a long time, I don't think our salvation is in a myriad of tiny screens. I would like the movie business to continue, just for the sake of getting us out of our houses and together, holding hands, as some storyteller reminds us of our shared values, challenges us to think beyond, or panders to our irrational fears.
The Theater of Dionysus didn't save Athens. All civilizations at some point fall. But we have to live somehow. It might as well be together.
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