Journal 4: Practicing Analysis and Montage

For the movie UP, the Ellie and Carl’s relationship through time montage is a true tear jerker. It starts off with very happy moments and one of UP’s famous musical motifs. They do all the cute things married couples do together; fixing up their dream house, painting their mailbox, having playful fun moments, holding hands, climbing up a hill to watch clouds, etc. as time progresses (and as their marriage progresses), the symbols around them, such as the clouds shapes they see, are baby oriented. This is a specific montage of these scenes to set up a story that a married couple after going through some time together eventually want to have kids. No words or dialogue needed. Then they start setting up something else together; a baby room. This is their new focus in life together. Instead of being off in South America, or fixing up their home, they are deciding to put their effort into a baby. To this point in the sequence of shots, the lighting in the scenes are bright colors (yellows, blues, reds, pinks).

As the scene suddenly changes to a dark grey and monotone lighting room, and the music simultaneously repeats the happy musical motive, but at a much slower tempo. With Ellie being in the rolling chair, its obvious that she is the “sick” one. After is follows the baby scenes, the water can assume its about not being able to fulfil that wish of theirs, and Ellie is barren. As Carl attempts to cheer up his depressed wife, he reminds her of their old wishes trying to get her excited about something again.

She smiles and the music speeds up and the colors of the scene get brighter. Ellie starts painting the walls again and we see that there is a shift of emotions, back to being happy again. They find that they want to save up and put their loose change in a jar. As the scene stays on the jar, but the background changes. With different time of day and different people putting coins in, we can assume much time has past. Each time they raise money, they have to use it for something more practical. Eventually Ellie dies and the scene goes back to being very sad and ends with Carl in a sad slump. This sets up the rest of the movie for Carl being and grumpy old man. It also sets up the watchers for going a little easy on him because we now know the story. Very well done.