‘Elemental’: Pixar’s High-tech animation tells age-old story of belonging

Pixar’s new movie “Elemental” presented its Emeryville-based team with one of its toughest technical challenges yet – in a history of challenging assignments — anthropomorphizing those nebulous classical elements of nature: fire, water, air and earth.

But it was even harder than that. The staff then had to do the bulk of the painstaking character creation during the COVID-19 shutdown.

“It was honestly not till late last year that frankly I was (like) OK, we can get it done,” said producer Denise Ream.

But while it was an intense feature to pull off due to various reasons, it was also of primary importance for director and co-writer Peter Sohn and Ream to get the details right and reflect the large diversity of the immigrant experience.

Yes, you read that right. A story about classical elements of nature reflects on immigration and the struggle to feel like you belong.

It starts with the fantastical realm of Element City, a bustling and vibrant place where an anger-prone fire element named Ember Lumen meets cute with an emotive water element named Wade Ripple. The two — voiced by Leah Lewis and Mamoudou Athie — discover that opposites do attract and that appreciating cultural differences make each of them more complete.

“Elemental” opens June 16 nationwide.

The idea behind the film, Pixar’s 27th feature, springs from Sohn’s love of science and his growing up as the son of Korean immigrant shop owners in the ‘70s Bronx. But he and Ream wanted a wider representation of experiences, and they set out to get it by sending an email blast to Pixar’s workforce, asking to hear from first- and second-generation immigrants who were willing to share their stories.

The response was overwhelming.

That’s the good news, but the more than 100 replies also posed a dilemma, said Ream, who lives in Mill Valley.

“How do you have these conversations and make them meaningful?” she said.

The solution: Dividing participating employees into groups of no more than eight so people could talk openly and share amongst each other. The plan worked.

“It was incredible to hear from people from all over the world with so many similar experiences,” Ream said. “And it was very emotional and moving. For a lot of these people it was the first time for them to come together and talk to others that had a similar experience.”

With that outpouring, though, came responsibility.

“I remember Denise and I talked about how we have to respect and honor all these stories as best as we can in the film,” said Sohn, who lives in Piedmont. “And it was a burden that we were very proud to carry.”

The conversations came at a politically sensitive time around the globe in 2020, Ream adds, just as Brexit happened and in the aftermath of a volatile American election that produced talk of closing down borders and led to an attack on American Democracy.

“It was pretty remarkable to be having these conversations and living through this moment in history where a country of immigrants and people were not being very supportive,” she said.

Then came the pandemic, with its widescale loss of life and suffering, and subsequent shutdown.

All of it affected the production of “Elemental” for Sohn, who was still struggling with his own grief from losing his father early in the filmmaking, then the death of his mother near the film’s completion. Sohn in interviews has credited his mother with turning him into a movie fan.

All of it proved challenging on a production that was technically complex and required numerous consultations.

“So to do one of our more technically complicated movies not together — I didn’t realize how much harder it was until we started coming back (to the office),” Ream said.

The production itself took on elemental traits, with sparks of joy sometimes being followed closely by the hard realities of filmmaking in uncharted waters.

“I kept thinking of laughs and tears,” said Sohn, who worked with Ream on 2015’s “The Good Dinosaur” and has been with Pixar for more than two decades, contributing to some of the studio’s biggest hits.

Much of the drama centered on Ember.

“There was so much joy when — out of the black holes of displays where a character on fire comes alive and blinks for the first time,” Sohn recalled. “And then the next day (to realize) that we can only do four close-ups because this is so hard to do … . We just felt that sort of balance. I don’t know if audiences will ever know nor should they know this difficult magic trick that this character is.”

Sohn’s movie does come from a personal place (stay for the end credits to see his dedication to his parents) and it’s that intimacy that gets reflected in key scenes that seem experienced, not conceived.

One of the darker sequences finds a young, enthusiastic Ember and her father being told their type is not welcome at a particular event. The crowd turns ugly, and Ember struggles to comprehend what’s happening and why her father is outraged.

It mirrors a vivid experience from Sohn’s past.

“I remember being with my father and walking in New York near his grocery store,” he says. “And we had rocks thrown at us and we heard, ‘Go back to your homeland!’ They said darker stuff than that. But I remember my father yelling at these people and I remember being shocked by it. Like why is my dad yelling at these folks? … . I remember yelling at my dad, ‘Don’t yell. Don’t be mean to them even though they were mean to us.’ But there was this trying to understand it all — like we don’t belong clearly. And yet my father’s fighting for it. And yet I don’t understand our place.”