It is the bedrock of almost any rom-com that the viewer must be held in rapt anticipation of the lovers' first kiss. What will happen when the barriers fall and these two are finally able to embrace? Most rom-coms know to build tension from this fateful meeting, but I'm pretty sure that Pixar's Elemental is the first film where that first kiss might actually leave the happy couple vaporized.
The fence keeping Ember Lumen and Wade Ripple from being together is one of pure chemistry. She's made of fire. He's made of water. She is a second-generation resident of Element City--her parents were among the first Fireland immigrants to the city. He is from the upper class. What could they ever be to each other?
No part of the film's connection to race or immigration is subtle, but there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. There is something really fascinating to seeing an illustration of multiculturalism in a system without human racism. Mind you, the film still invokes real-world experiences with racism as shorthand--the Lumen's story plays like a pastiche of Irish and Asian immigrant accounts--but the disembodied landscape does open up some doors for the film to get creative with its thesis. (Points for not using this ambiguous middle ground as an excuse to not cast POC actors as the leads in a story that is essentially about race.)
Much of the world-building and narrative make-up stems from the logistics of a society organized by sentient fireballs and walking clouds. The danger in any high-concept movie, especially one courting a child audience, is getting too enamored with its own premise and burying itself in gimmicks. This film can't help but indulge in a few element-based puns (e.g. the prepubescent earthy neighbor kid bragging about finally growing flowers in his armpit, or the water-based construction workers having an adverse reaction to the cement powder), but the film stops just short of being gratuitous or insecure. It is from this same ecosystem that the film finds its thematic throughline.
The film commits to the idea that Ember and Wade are opposites, not only as literal opposing elements, but as spiritual complements. Ember has a short fuse, Wade swims downstream. In what universe could they ever get along, let alone discover a bond that runs deeper than mere molecules. The film actually has some solid answers for that. What do you actually get when you put fire and water together? If you know how, you can get a rainbow.
And there are lots of "rainbows" in this film, many of which are on visual display for the audience to marvel in while Ember and Wade are busy chasing a pipe leak. The details of the animation process are beyond my field of study, but this couldn't have been an easy film to animate, even looking past the fact that few of the films characters are even technically solid. That's nothing to say of the film's many epic vistas as water, earth, fire, and air intermingle in the most spectacular ways. These visuals are so otherworldly that it kinda makes you forget that this entire mess started over a city code violation.
And that's kind of the best case for animation as a medium: you can take any mundane or overlooked facet of modern living, be it working your way up as an immigrant in a brave new world or maintaining your shop on the corner, but if you can draw it creatively enough, it will be captivating. It will make long-held truths feel new, even revelatory.
--The Professor
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