🍿 Elio

I think the story has a heart: a boy who feels alone and wants to find a place where he feels wanted. I had this feeling that the movie is about me several times and, as a viewer, that's one of the things that draws me to a movie. However futuristic or magical or weird a story may be, as soon as I find a shared feeling with a character, their world feels much more realistic to me.

As someone who has been the "weird one" almost all my life, I certainly know the feeling that forced Elio to say:

there’s 500 million habitable planets out there and one of them’s got to want me!

That feeling of wanting to be abducted by unknown aliens? Yup, I'm familiar with something similar (albeit a lot darker) idea.

That feeling that the people around you don't really want you? That they are somehow being forced to like you and live with you? Yup.

If you remove the aliens and the science fiction stuff, it's a "simple" case of a child wrestling with loneliness while the world around him wants him to become "normal".

In Elio's case (and because it's a movie, a Pixar movie), it only took around 2 hours to reconcile and learn the life lessons that some take a whole lifetime to learn. Some people think that these kinds of movies are for children (and they'd be mostly correct) but I'd argue one of the reasons animated movies will always be relevant is because they speak to the inner children inside all adults. Maybe you don't have the same issues Elio has, maybe your childhood was perfect (congrats, I hate you 😡) but for those of us who are still struggling with these things, animated movies are a great way to teach or remind us the lessons we need to learn or remember.

I hope Pixar never stops creating movies and stories like this.