Pixar's Deep Dive into Teen Emotions and Self-Discovery

CHENNAI: What psychoanalysis provides as insight, with its dissection of an individual's thoughts and behavior, art provides as collective wisdom through its dissection of our human condition. Perhaps the greatest triumph and culmination of centuries of art is trying to make sense of our unspoken impulses through simple stories. From this perspective, it seems that Pixar is at the forefront of our modern storytelling mechanism, namely cinema. In Inside Out 2, Pixar addresses complex psychological truths, while staying strictly within the confines of animation and its playfulness.

While Inside Out (2015) shows how a child develops their emotions and, in doing so, learns to accept their darker emotions, Inside Out 2 shows how a teenage girl deals with more complex emotions as she reaches puberty and develops self-awareness. As the film begins, joy, anger, disgust, fear, and sadness are comfortable navigating a young Riley's emotions. Everything is going well until one day puberty hits, like a bunch of disorganized construction crews, breaking in and switching consoles, and immediately after, new emotions arrive: Anxiety, Boredom (Boredom), Embarrassment and Envy . These new, sophisticated emotions, driven by anxiety, wreak havoc by bottling up basic emotions (literally) and taking over the console. It's charming how the film treats new emotions with empathy, even as all of Riley's bad decisions and ensuing chaos fall apart once they take control. Considering that these new emotions are the precursors of the central conflict, they could have been presented as the antagonists of the familiar protagonists: the basal emotions. But the creators are particularly keen to treat this story about human emotions with deep empathy and an understanding of the inner workings of psychology.

The nuanced characterization of new emotions appears in brief flashes of ingenuity as much as it plays out across the film's pivotal moments. Through charming dialogue and quirky scenes, we see how some of the oldest emotions relate to the new emotions: sadness and embarrassment return friendliness from the start; Fear is related to anxiety's tendency to worry about the future. While the first film was all about emotions coming to terms with sadness, the second film thankfully doesn't just reiterate the arc of the first film. However, the central message of the film remains that of self-acceptance, and it is treated with a complex and sophisticated approach. We see Riley develop her self-esteem as almost every emotion goes through its own little character arc. Much like the first film, Joy continues to experience the biggest character development of all. It could be argued that the sequel doesn't quite hit the emotional peak set by the first film's heartbreaking scene involving Bing Bong. However, there is a particular moment near the end of the film, where it suddenly hits you with a wave of poetic melancholy.

This is the scene where Joy poignantly reflects on her inability to help Riley and sadly states, “Maybe that's what happens when you get older, you feel less joy.” In many ways, Inside Out is as much about a young girl struggling with emotions and growing up as it is about the loss of innocence and the many ways parts of us die so that we evolve. The Inside Out franchise is as much about death as it is about life. While the first film is about the death of childish happiness, the second film is about the death of our rosy perception of ourselves. As emotions learn towards the end of the film, emotions cannot dictate who we are and that we have limited control over our perception of ourselves. The film proposes that the world, our environment, our experiences, our ability to control our emotions, and our good and bad memories combine to form our belief systems, and our self-esteem is built on top of that.

Inside Out 2 isn't just about keeping emotions in check. With its deep psychological understanding, the film questions the different complexities of our minds and offers a philosophical reflection on how we shape our own identity. It may be easier to talk about all of the philosophies mentioned above in a simple way, but the genius of Inside Out 2 is how it has fun with the format and keeps a firm hand on the console that ensures that the film is thoroughly entertaining.

Movie: Inside Out 2

Directors: Kelsey Mann

Starring: Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan, Maya Hawke, Ayo Edebiri

Rating: 3.5/5