It’s nearly fifteen years since Pixar, the little studio behind a small batch of acclaimed and Oscar-winning computer animated shorts, released the revolutionary Toy Story. It was actually viewed as somewhat risky at the time. The long, expensive process required for computer animation seemingly ill-suited for feature length endeavors, the resulting images perhaps a little cold compared to the hand-drawn material coming from Disney studios for decades. How the movie landscape has changed. Now you can’t hopscotch through a multiplex’s auditoriums without encountering a computer animated film, and some franchises are focusing on third and fourth editions. Through it all, Pixar remains miles ahead of their followers and competitors, not because their animation is smoother and more elegant (though it is) or because their design work is more inventive (though it is). Pixar stays at the forefront because, above all else, its artisans are genuine filmmakers, focusing on characters, plots, themes, ideas. Computer animation is their method, not their purpose. Their newest film is the latest evidence of that. Up is exquisite.

Directed by Pete Docter (with Bob Peterson credited as co-director), the film focuses on Carl Fredericksen. Though the film covers much of his life, the plot truly kicks in when Carl is an elderly man living alone in the house he once shared with his late wife. He escapes the looming intrusion of a modern world that is closing in on him by setting his home aloft, achieving the unlikely airborne state with a vast battalion of helium balloons sprung from his chimney. To his surprise, he discovers a local scout has come along on the journey as an inadvertent stowaway. That much of the story can be gleaned from the poster, but there’s much more to it that will go unreported here. Suffice it to say that the dense, inspired plotting that has marked nearly every Pixar release is is full effect in Up.

But there’s something more, something quite unlike any of their prior efforts. There is an emotional richness to Carl’s story. Early on, Docter employs a quietly elegant montage to track through the entirety of Carl’s marriage to his beloved Ellie. With expertly crafted images, Docter gives a movingly complete sense of two lives intertwined. It’s a measure of his success that once Ellie is absent from the story, she still feels like a fully present character, lingering on in the heart and mind of our protagonist. As befits one of the main points of the film, Docter largely achieves this through loving attention to the smallest moments. It adds weight and heart and meaning to all of the moments, large and small, that follow.

At times, it feels like Up does everything a movie can possibly do: entertains, moves, thrills, tickles, inspires. And it does so with a story fairly quivering with imagination. The odd element here or there might be familiar, but the overall sensation is of fresh discovery. Up progresses in ways largely unexpected, unfolding a story quite unlike anything that’s come before, straight through to the small triumph of human connection that marks its close. Many Pixar films have been worth celebrating, Pete Docter has made one worth cherishing.

(Posted simultaneously to “Jelly-Town!”)