If there’s a thing that one can always expect to take home from a Disney film, it’s a lesson. Behind every sidekick, princess, and villain, there’s a deep message fitted into the narrative. However, when the story perfectly fits with the actual meaning, magic is created, and in their latest project Coco, they’ve proven it once again.
Filled to the brim with vibrant colours and life, Coco screams culture in every sense of the world. However, the real magic in the film, isn’t just the celebration of Mexico, but it’s so much more. Buried underneath the bright colours of every hue in the palette lies a bittersweet tone and an intricate and rather deft examination of grief and death.
Simply put, in Coco, the dead have never been so present, as the story follows Miguel – a Mexican boy who aspires to be a musician in a family which detests music because of a past tragedy – who ends up joining the world of the departed and lives ironically with them all around him.
The story tackles death and grief in a way that hasn’t been touched in an animation ever before.
Unlike many animations related to the world of Walt Disney in the past, their recent search into life’s different mysteries is a bold testament to changing times in the world. Like Brave, Moana, Frozen, and Zootopia this too, omits the ‘love’ factor, and instead tackles family ties, being true to oneself, and society as a whole.
If it didn’t have the company’s name plastered all over it, one would actually feel they’re watching an intense soap. That being said, the positive bewilderment attached to it, could only be a work of Disney and Pixar.
Delivered through a brightly coloured package which teems with wit and music, Coco is a fresh entrant that shouldn’t be missed. It’s a celebration of all that one doesn’t celebrate and through the quick-moving narrative actually ends up teaching more than just a lesson or two. Be prepared to shed a tear or two, and feel that warm fuzziness inside you as the film ends!
