Inside Out (2015, dir. Pete Docter) is likely to turn any adult viewer into a tear-stained, nose-running mess. I write as a member of an audience this afternoon. Whether the film will have that effect on children and teenagers may be less certain. I write as an observer of the rest of the audience.
Inside Out earns its tears by legitimate means. The story is deeply, genuinely γλυκύπικρον, glukopikron, sweet-bitter. What I loved most was the film’s insistence on the rightful place of sadness, or Sadness, in human character. If I say more, I’ll begin to explain too much.
Best line: “Where’s Joy?”
[The word γλυκύπικρον is strongly associated with the poetry of Sappho, in which it describes ἔρος, eros. Inside Out isn’t about eros though. Riley, the protagonist, is eleven.]
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Inside Out
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comments: 2
Does that exclude outlining for him?
I must admit that "careful disorderliness" seems ambiguous to me. Either it might be an oxymoron (carefulness and disorderliness have at the very least opposed tendencies) or it might mean the careful creation of disorderliness (or the appearance of disorderliness or a kind of orderliness disguised as disorder). I like the second alternative better.
I think it’s meant to be an oxymoron and a joking comment on his narrative. The novel often seems a matter of retrograde motion: a chapter will often begin by taking up something that there wasn’t opportunity to discuss in the preceding chapter. In other words, “Before I go on to tell you about y, I first have to go back to tell you about x.”
If anyone is puzzled, these comments are about a sentence from Moby-Dick.
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