Remember Me.

Rating: 8/10 (25 February 2018)

I found myself surprisingly cold towards Coco for much of its first half, and for a moment I thought the Pixar magic had faded a little. It's a film about love, life and death, all the big themes, and not just romantic love, but love of artistry and great works, touches of the same passion that saw Ratatouille become so much more than just a rat who wanted to cook and walk like a human. Yet it all seemed a little familiar; the boy who craves a career beyond his day-to-day humdrum, and the parental figures who deny him. Who could blame him? Shoe-making is hardly the stuff of daydreams, and parents never have solid concrete reasoning when it comes to shooting down fun. They might as well have pushed him into stealing that fabled guitar.
That boy is 12 year old Miguel Rivera, and like any protagonist in an animated film, has come to the stage in his life where he senses his true calling in the wind. He's animated with a pudgy, oval-shaped face, and saucer-like eyes that light up whenever he sees and hears his musical idol Ernesto de la Cruz. There's even a moment that seems to be plucked straight from Ratatouille itself; Miguel reaching out to stroke an old recording of Ernesto on a fuzzy screen, the power of nostalgia compelling him to seek out his destiny. Doesn't he know to never meet your heroes?
It takes all of 40 or so minutes for the meat of the story to truly begin, and meanwhile various hijinks and slapstick action sequences pave the way for Miguel's entry into the Land of the Dead on the annual day of Día de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday where spirits from past lives cross over to the living to visit their grandchildren and so on. There's a goofy, somewhat dispensable animal sidekick by the name of Dante, and most of the story's driven primarily by Miguel's selfish intentions to forge his own musical career no matter what his family might say. I can't comment with too much authority on the cultural accuracy of Coco, but most importantly it seems to have been made with lots of genuine heart and desire to capture exactly how important family is to this particular bunch, and its thematic depth is nicely backed by an wide array of Latin-American talent. Moana was an excellent start, and it's great to see that vein of cultural sensitivity continue with Coco.
There's also a pretty potent motif of memory and how it is treasured throughout generations, conveyed mainly through the race to discover the real identity of a torn family portrait. This is simple visual storytelling done elegantly, but by now we're familiar with Pixar's mastery of this (just think of Wall-E's first half, which is basically a silent film). By the time the twist is finally revealed almost all of us have correctly guessed that the scruffy rascal Hector was the real ancestral muse all this time, but somehow it's moving all the same. Then you rewind and realise all the tell-tale signs that were merely setting up the big reveal, and it becomes all the more poignant: his desperation at needing to return to the living before it is too late, he and Miguel's practically flawless duet performance, and the sprinkling of a hit song that finally reveals a truer, more heartfelt purpose.
Coco may not have the musical variety of The Book of Life (both excellent films in their own ways, although comparisons will be inevitable), but it does have Remember Me, which is gradually filtered down from Ernesto's bombastic stage version to the simplest of tunes in its third and final rendition. Here, it's accompanied only by the faint strumming of an acoustic guitar, and delivered through the heartbreak of Miguel, who along with the audience has finally realised its significance. It's all in the lyrics, which express how music and life are undeniably intertwined. See the final performance where both the living and the dead sway to the beat of Miguel's newfound confidence; they can't see the spirits of the past, but they know that they're there with them, in here. That old adage comes to mind, that you never really die until your name is uttered for the very last time. I think Coco, for what it's worth, will be remembered for quite some time.