Elemental (2023)
Dir: Peter Sohn
Writers: John Hoberg; Kat Likkel; Brenda Hsueh
Stars: Leah Lewis; Mamoudou Athie; Ronnie Del Carmen
By Paul Bernardo paulieb2003@gmail.com
Peter Sohn has been animating for over 23 years. This guy started with Iron Giant, and then moved to Pixar and was an animator on Finding Nemo and The Incredibles and so on. Peter also began doing voice over work in 2009 starting with Monsters University. So this guy knows what good is. Peter is an Korean who parents were “off the boat” per say, and he made is way from NY to CalTech to Pixar. His Dad was a very hard worker, as was his Mom, and they instilled that in Peter, and boy does it show. This film is epic. I mean it is the full range of emotions and then some. Not an easy sell, so the initial box office was not dynamite. Word of mouth, however, propelled this baby to the stratosphere and made it a big success.
This film only runs 1h 41m and it packs everything into that time like you would not believe. So much is covered, so many stories told, so many tissues used and so many emotions just spent. It’s incredible. There are not may films like this at all.
Elemental is a rare film. In imagination, animation and in storytelling. I cannot praise this film enough. It’s something every film buff should study. This amazing film proves you do not need a 3 hour movie to get your point across and if you do, you’re doing it wrong.
Peter is a son of Korean immigrants, so you have the immigrant story, then the parent story, the teenage story, the love story, the political story, the coming of age story, I mean this film packs it all in, very coherently and very beautifully. You would think with all these stories going on it would be confusing and 3 hours long. Yet Peter does it one step at a
time, so you easily understand everything and you easily feel everything all within 2 hours.
It’s a great way to tell everyone’s story, and no one’s story. Fire and Water. Aren’t we all? I think this film is brilliant, I think the way Peter went about it was brilliant. He can touch on all these life topics without offending anyone, yet sharing it with everyone.
If I had more sunshine to give this film, I would. As it stands – it gets a beautiful sunny day.
Thanks for reading and see you next week.
