‘Elemental’ movie review: Pixar’s beautiful song of ice and fire

This love story from Pixar pushes the envelope visually to tell a heart-warming, layered love story

Just as I was wondering whether Pixar had stopped the tradition of short films before the main feature, comes Carl’s Date before Elemental. The charming short is the sixth in the Dug Days series, which is a sequel to Up and tells of the adventures of the widower Carl (Ed Asner) and his golden retriever, Dug (Bob Peterson). In Carl’s Date, Carl has a date with Ms Meyers and is decidedly nervous. After a lot of good and goofy advice from Dug, Carl is finally ready to plunge into life again.

The charming 10-minute film sets the tone for Elemental, which works like a parable where profound truths are hidden in a simple love story. Fire elements, Bernie (Ronnie del Carmen) and Cinder (Shila Ommi) move to Element City, which is not very easy for them to navigate being composed mainly of water.

Bernie and Cinder move to the outskirts and settle in Fire Town where they have a child, Ember (Reagan To). Bernie runs a convenience store, slowly gaining the patronage of all the residents of Fire Town. Both Bernie and Cinder are distrustful of water. Bernie would like to retire and hand over the convenience store to Ember, but only once she learns to control her temper.

Ember (Leah Lewis) grows up into a caring, affectionate daughter working around the convenience store, making deliveries but still has trouble controlling her temper. When Bernie asks her to handle the red dot sale at the store as a test to see if she is ready to take over the store, Ember feels her temper rising as she is besieged by demanding customers. She goes to the basement to let off steam and unfortunately cracks the pipes causing flooding.

A genial, easy-going water element, Wade (Mamoudou Athie), an inspector from Element City, is also sucked in through the pipes. Sparks fly between the two opposing elements as they race against time to figure out what causes the flooding. While the plot might not be one of the most inventive Pixar has come up with, its very simplicity is irresistible.

Visually, Elemental is stunning — the way Ember and Wade have been brought to life is an eye-popping intersection of technology and imagination. Ember’s wavy warmth finds the perfect mate in Wade’s solid fluidity.

Apart from being a love story of the impossible attraction and chemistry of opposites, Elemental is also the story of immigrants making their lives in a different place, of taking a slice of their old life, culture and values to their new world. It is also the story of the fear of things one does not understand, of making dreams come true as well as coming to terms with the burden of expectation and the terrible grief and joy of letting go.