I have a partial bone to pick with COVID; it has extensively curtailed my enjoying films on the big screen in a theater. I’ve managed to make it to this point without being infected, but where I used to spend a Saturday at the theater, seeing two or three films, now I’ll usually only go to a single movie that’s been out for a while so the crowds are limited. It’s meant I’ve missed some films I really wanted to see, such as Licorice Pizza, which left the theaters here before I felt safe going out to see it. On the other hand, I’ve streamed a number of films that normally would have taken months to be so released, such as Dune and West Side Story. It’s different sitting two feet from my computer screen to watch a film instead of having the theater experience, but for safety’s sake I’ll live with it.
This has meant that some excellent films, which would have been box office gold in a normal year, have only had a very limited release before heading to streaming services. Probably the greatest impact was on Black Widow, which likely would have reached the box office stratosphere. That also happened with last year’s Oscar winner for Best Animated Film, Pixar’s Soul. And now it’s happening to this year’s Pixar offering, Turning Red.
Red is the first feature directed and co-written by Domee Shi, who is the first woman to solo-direct a Pixar feature. She also was the first woman to direct a Pixar short. Bao was released with Incredibles 2, and is the last short that Pixar put out. It won the 2019 Oscar for Best Animated Short, and it deals (in 7 memorable minutes, without dialogue) with the challenges of taking a child to adulthood, for both the child and the mother. Turning Red paints a similar picture, with a much broader canvas.
Mei (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) is a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian living in Toronto in 2002 who celebrates the independence she feels as she nears full adulthood. She has a close posse of fellow nerds named Miriam, Abby, and Priya (voices of Ava Morse, Hyein Park, and Maytreyi Ramakrishnan, respectively) who love anime, oogling the 16-year-old boy who works at the local convenience store, and are intense fans of the boy band 4*Town. In reality, Mei’s independence is constrained as she’s expected to help with the maintaining of the family’s temple, run by her mother Ming (Sandra Oh) with support from her father, Jin (Orion Lee).
But then one morning Mei wakes up and discovers she’s changed into a huge red panda. She at first hides it from her family and friends – her mother assumes Mei’s periods have started – when she finds if she controls her emotions she reverts to human form. But any intense feelings, and poof – she’s a red panda again. Her mother is the first to discover what’s happening to Mei, which leads to a startling confession: Ming was expecting this to happen, but had missed seeing the signs. She tells Mei the story of their family and a matriarch from long ago. During a time of war when all the men were conscripted into the army, the matriarch had asked the gods for the power of the Red Panda to protect their village. Since that time, all the women of the family have had that gift/curse, though they’re able to lock away the red panda spirit through a incantation performed by a shaman during a red moon. Mei has to make it through a month until the time of the next red moon. But around that same time, 4*Town is scheduled to play the Toronto Skydome, and Mei and her posse are determined to be there for it.
It’s obvious that Turning Red is a parable of puberty, particularly from the female point of view. It helps that, for the first time for a Pixar film, the main creative team – director, screenwriters, producer, director of photography, production design, art direction – is composed completely of women. Domee Shi set the film in 2002, when she was the age of Mei, and the design of the characters is closer to anime than previous Pixar films. It’s a mistake, though, to think of this as a film that’s only speaking to a particular niche. Red’s theme of a child learning to define themselves separate from their parents is universal. The story also flows in surprising ways, with a cockeyed view of the world that’s delightful.
Setting the film in Toronto is natural, since its Domee Shi’s hometown following her parent’s immigration from China, but it’s also a perfect choice since Toronto is one of the most culturally diverse cities in North America. The school Mei attends has a Sikh security guard, which might stand out in other places but would be de rigueur in Toronto. The voice actors are uniformly outstanding, though special mention must be given to both Rosalie Chiang and Sandra Oh. They breathe a depth into their characters that makes them both unique and completely familiar.
Since its release, Turning Red has engendered many negative comments in some circles, while others who’ve seen it are strongly appreciated of the film’s message. You can count me in the latter group. (Vox has published a wonderful breakdown of why this has happened. Click here to read it.) I actually think Turning Red is a Rorschach test with red ink rather than black. The negative responses tend to say more about the person posting the comment than about the movie. Any movie that can garner responses like that has tapped into a deep psychological vein as well as current events, as some adults try to limit a young person’s world so that it fits within the adult’s prejudices. However, Turning Red’s positive statements about self-acceptance may be the perfect message for this moment. “We’ve all got an inner beast. We’ve all got a messy, loud, weird part of ourselves hidden away. And a lot of us never let it out. But I did. How about you?”
omnivorous cinephile 