“Are you crying?”
“I’ve just never been punched in the face by beauty before.”
Elemental is a 2023 film, the 27th feature-length movie from Pixar Studios. Elemental is directed by Peter Sohn based on a story written by Sohn along with Kat Likkel, Brenda Hsueh, and John Hoberg. The film stars Mamoudou Athie and Leah Lewis who are joined by Catherine O’Hara, Ronnie del Carmen, Shila Ommi, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Joe Pera, and Mason Wertheimer. Carl’s Date is a Pixar short playing before the film itself, starring Ed Asner and Bob Peterson. It is also written and directed by Peterson.
“You really food inspector?”
“As far as you know, yes.”
Firish immigrants Bernie (del Carmen) and Cinder (Ommi) have managed to make a decent life for themselves in Firetown, an outer Borough of Element City, a gleaming metropolitan sprawl on the coast which is home to all four elements. Unable to find an apartment to rent in the rest of the city due to the fears and prejudices the other elements harbor about fire elementals, Bernie purchases a dilapidated wreck of a building in Firetown with what meager sums of money he can scrape together. He and Cinder renovate it into an income-generating bodega called the Fireplace. They live in the apartment above, where they raise their daughter, Ember (Lewis). Bernie represses resentment and animus of earth and air elementals for the way he and Cinder were treated but carries special scorn and contempt for water. After years of hard work and with his daughter a young adult, Bernie grooms Ember to replace him and run the shop so he can retire. The problem is, she can’t control her explosive temper nor relate to the customers, which constantly causes trouble.
After a particularly prickly interaction on Red Tag Day, while trying to make a sale, she feels her temperature rising exponentially. Ember races to the basement to fulminate furtively and not disturb any shoppers. She loses it and detonates, shaking the streets and rattling the pipes in the ramshackle building. The pipes spring a leak. The leaks multiply rapidly and despite Ember using the heat of her hands to melt the metal and seal the seams, she’s unable to keep up.
Suddenly, to Ember’s surprise, a water elemental streams out of one of the split pipes. He introduces himself as Wade Ripple (Athie), a trainee over at the city’s municipal Water & Power, who was assigned to hunt for leaks. Regular, inexplicable, low-level leaks cascade across Firetown, bedeviling the combustible residents therein but the city doesn’t consider them a priority. Though Wade finds Ember fascinating, he realizes he has a job to do. Bernie’s slapdash, DIY pipeworks are clearly not up to code and Wade begins to catalog the infractions, writing up ticket after ticket.
It soon becomes apparent to him that the shop will have to be shut down. He heads back to headquarters. The consequences of her actions and behavior become evident to Ember. Her inability to harness her emotions and keep her cool is going to cost her father the shop he poured his heart and soul into. Bernie and Cinder will be out on the streets. Ember can’t be responsible for that. She’s afraid she’s failed; Ember’s afraid she’s a bad daughter. She resolves to race after Wade and keep him from turning in his report, hopefully giving her family as long as they need to fix the plumbing.
Once Wade realizes he’s being pursued, he tries to evade Ember and a complicated chase ensues. After some effort and clever execution, she’s able to catch up with Wade and convince him to listen. Ember explains the deep meaning the shop has for her family, how her father feels it’s a home away from home not just for him but for other fire element immigrants who feel that the Fireplace helps to keep the memories of the old country alive in their hearts and minds, and that snuffing the shop will just devastate Bernie, who’s failing health has become more and more apparent.
Fascinated by the fiery lady for a moment before, Wade finds himself enchanted by Ember and agrees to help her. It’s just that he’s filed the paperwork already, so the element Ember will have to convince is his boss, Gale (McLendon-Covey). They track Gale down at Cyclone Stadium. She’s an avid Windbreakers fan and never misses a game. While Ember explains to Gale how important the Fireplace is to her father, her family, and her neighborhood, Wade is able to relate to his neighbors in the audience, then the crowd in their stadium section, rallying support for the Windbreakers. He is even able to encourage their star player from the stands, enabling the Windbreakers to win the game.
Ember is a little more than impressed with Wade’s natural charisma and ability to work the room. She recognizes that his charm and grace are skills she’s sorely lacking in. There’s something else simmering there, emotions she tamps down right away; she’s well aware of her father’s feelings about water. Besides, he always says elements don’t mix.
Elated by her team’s victory, Gale relents. She’ll ignore the violations if Wade and Ember can find the source of the leak and get it fixed Friday, otherwise, she’ll have to begin the process that will lead to Bernie’s property being condemned.
Can Ember and Wade find the source of the leaks and fix them by Friday, saving the Fireplace? Will Wade stop going with the flow long enough to tell Ember how he feels about her? Will Ember follow the path prepared for her by her father or can she learn to embrace her true talents and heed her own calling? Where IS all that water coming from, anyway? See Elemental for the answers.
“The shop is not the dream Ember; you are the dream.”
Elemental is an ambitious, seemingly simple-looking film that is telling a complex story. On one level, it’s the same Star-Crossed Lovers tale seen for centuries. An old tale, it’s well-handled, deftly done with witty banter from the winsome couple. Will they, won’t they? It’s a basic rom-com done in CG about water and fire people in love.
Take the next slice and it’s a movie about a father’s feelings for his daughter and desperate need to do right by her. The familial elements are very touching and grounded in universal feelings. Traditions are heavy, the past hard to carry into the present. Time marches on. People grow older. Sometimes people have to grow up before they’re ready.
When looked at from another angle, it’s a perceptively potent parable of prejudice. A story about assimilation and immigration, the difficulty of starting over in a new country, raising a new generation, hoping to keep a home they’ve never known alive in the hearts of their children. It’s about making it in the face of adversity and structural iniquity. Don’t tell anyone, whisper it maybe, but Elemental is a story about deeply-embedded Structural Racism and privilege.
Elemental is a beautiful movie. The city itself is gorgeous. A lot of thought has been put into the architecture and infrastructure which is given a weight and density that is needed to anchor the environments in a story with such a whimsical premise. The seemingly simple art style is also more than it appears at first glance. Fire and water people are multilayered, lucent, and translucent at the same time. Wade’s fluids course and bubble within him while Ember’s emotions are tied to her temperatures and are color-coded, the light and flames flaring up, glowing, gouting, sputtering, and subsiding as manifested by her mood.
The various titular elements are handled unevenly. The water and fire families get the bulk of the attention, with air and earth elementals reduced largely to window-dressing, but the fear all the other elements display around fire when they’re not deliberately shunning or ignoring the Firish is palpable.
Though called Firish, the fire elementals seem Muslim-coded. It’s a bit of a mess, a lot of cultures crammed in, so there’s not a one-to-one, real-world comparison, but that might be part of the point. In this day and age Elemental is a valuable film trying to tell a valuable story. We are better for our differences, we are better for our combinations and our diversity. Remember the past, love your family if you can, be in the moment, and embrace the future. Maybe the best path for you is the path you find and the path you choose. If you happen to walk that path with a partner you love, so much the better.
Elemental is in theatres June 16th, 2023.
Newsdesk 
Brian Isaacs - Executive Editor / Publisher