A Beautiful Movie that Transcends Age and Nationality

Rating: 8/10 (10 November 2019)

Miguel comes from a long line of music-haters after his great-great-grandfather left his young family to pursue a life in music. He was cut out entirely, and his actions as a deadbeat dad reverberated through the generations. For the last five generations, Miguel's family have been shoemakers, and abhorred any source of music. Unfortunately for Miguel he's garnered a taste for the musical, learning guitar by watching old movies of a famous singer from the town. As Dia De Muertos nears, he seeks a way to pursue his love of music, and instead finds himself transported to the land of the dead, surrounded by deceased ancestors, and starts a race against time to find his way back to the land of the living while also keeping his love of music.
Pixar have never shied away from darker, more emotional themes in their movies, arguably reaching an apex with Inside Out's exploration of depression. Coco is potentially another emotional apex for the company, looking at death and family together, marrying it up with memory and Alzheimer's, and the power music holds over generations. Coco, unlike any other Pixar movie, also isn't afraid of showing death either. One of the opening scenes shows a man getting crushed by a bell, while another one later shows a man falling to the ground after being poisoned. And to turn away from these moments as Pixar usually would would've felt disingenuous in a movie all about death.
Linked to this is the legacy we all leave of memory. If we can be remembered for generations, we gain immortality, but to be forgotten is to suffer a final death. This is a fate Hector starts to suffer through the movie, as his family has forgotten him, and his last living relative who knew him when he was alive also starts to forget and pass away themselves. This offers a double whammy of emotion because even though Hector is already dead, he needs to avoid being forgotten so he can stay in the land of the dead with his loved ones. And music is the solution. Music is passed down through time, is never forgotten, and means something to everyone. It's been proven to rekindle memory in Alzheimer's patients, and Coco takes this and builds an entire story around it.
Coco also manages to stay true to its cultural portrayals. Much like Moana before it, Coco is as much a celebration of a culture as it is a moving, emotional story of death and memory. Not being Mexican myself no doubt much of its significance went completely over my head, but it remains respectful of Mexican traditions throughout, and even features cameos from various Mexican celebrities. Dia De Muertos means a lot to Mexicans, and so there's no better way to celebrate them and their culture than with a story revolving around that tradition.
Unsurprisingly Coco is a visual treat, surpassing that of even other Pixar movies. There's so much detail in every shot, and even when deliberately cartoony, each and every character enjoys the painstaking detail that brings them to life. Mama Coco herself is probably the best example of this, appearing both as a caricature of an old woman, while also being one of the most anatomically accurate portrayals of an old woman in an animated feature. The wrinkles, the way the skin sags, the way she holds herself in her wheelchair, the blemishes in her skin, her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her hair. She just looks like anyone's grandmother. The settings and backdrops similarly enjoy an incredible amount of detail paid to them. The Land of the Dead in particular is so vibrant and full of life (heh) with lights and colours everywhere. It's depicted as a city of towers, where the new builds upon the old, all the way back to the stepped temples of the Mayans and Aztecs and up through to modern cityscapes and apartment blocks.
The music is also pretty good as well, which is fortunate considering how much of the movie revolves around it as a key concept. The score by Michael Giacchino is interlaced with Mexican instrumentation like mariachi trumpets and nylon-strung acoustic guitars, but most of the emotional weight of the film comes through its original songs by Germaine Franco, and Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. The latter of which wrote the movie's most pivotal song "Remember Me" which is great and so versatile it's sung and arranged at least three different ways throughout the movie. In many ways the original songs make Coco feel more like usual Disney affair, and while it might not be as musically strong as Moana, it still sits at home alongside other Disney musicals.
Coco is a beautiful movie for all ages and all nationalities. It speaks to everyone the world over about death and family, and remembering the ones we've lost, making it a fitting movie to watch now, around Remembrance Day. It may touch on similar plot points as other Disney/Pixar movies, but when the formula works there's no need to disrupt it when a movie like Coco comes around injecting fresh voices and concepts into it. I give it a tentative 8/10, but in time I could absolutely see it getting bumped up to a 9. Bring tissues.