The Incredibles

There’s an interesting thing about this movie. For an animated feature, it really takes its time to get moving. After an action packed sequence as the movie opens, it calms down for the better part of an hour to allow us to get to know about its characters. Bob Parr, the erstwhile Mr. Incredible, works now in a soul-destroying insurance company. Now, if you’re an 8 –year old kid, would you rather watch a frustrated middle-aged executive battle bureaucratic corruption or a red-suited superhero fight a giant killer robot? However, this is just part of the movies cunning plan – it knows that many of the grownups watching the movie will relate to its central subtext – that in growing up, we compromise, but the idealist inside us doesn’t have to die. Mr. Incredible has tried, oh, how he’s tried …to bury the hero he once was, because the world doesn’t want heroes like him anymore. Instead of doing what he most wants to do – help people with his special gifts – he instead has to deny old women their coverage claims. The zenith of the frustration this causes him is when he desperately wants to stop a mugging in progress happening before his eyes, yet his odious boss orders him to do nothing. At this point he snaps and throws his boss through several walls. It’s a satisfying moment, but also a scary one. And it’s meant to be. William Blake has a proverb that I once spent several months trying to understand. “Better to strangle an infant in the crib than nurse unanswered desires.” Wow. That’s pretty intense, no? But think about it. What Blake is saying isn’t that you should strangle a baby. He’s saying that as horrible as that is, the consequences that arise from suppressing your true nature will lead to worse things.

Thus it is with Mr. Incredible. All he wants is to help people, to stop crimes, to be a hero – but the world has no place for that. And this can only be a bad thing. Try as he might, he can’t escape his inherent nature. His wife, Helen, who formerly went by the name Elastigirl, is much better at dealing with this new reality. She’s an elastic person in attitude as well as her abilities. (This metaphor of superpowers mirroring the internal persona plays out with the other characters also – Violet, the teen daughter, literally vanishes when she’s around the boy she likes – she’s a shrinking violet due to her shyness. And Dash’s superspeed is an obvious analog to his AD/HD ness. Samuel L. Jackson’s Frozone? C’mon! He’s coooooool.)

The joy that this movie contains is from seeing The Incredibles – particularly Mr. Incredible – get to express their true natures after suppressing them for so long. After being told his whole life to not run faster than other people, little dash is finally told to run as fast as he can. The look of bliss that crosses his face when he realizes he’s moving so fast he’s running on water is the look of someone who has finally accessed his place in the world. That’s a wonderful feeling. After all the set-up the movie gives you, when you finally do get to the giant robot showdowns, you care that much more.

One other point about this movie. Apart from the explicit critique of the insurance industry (which I loved), it also contains a major theme about mediocrity. It’s possible to say this movie is defending the value of elites. Several times the line “Everyone’s special…which means no-one is.” Gets uttered. I think many people will be uneasy about this aspect of the movie. I am certainly not one of them. ‘All men are created equal’ is a great fiction for basing a democratic government on, but it’s a fiction nonetheless. We’re NOT created equal. It’s okay for people to excel. You shouldn’t feel guilty for excelling. I saw something on the news this weekend that made my jaw hit the floor. Apparently there’s a movement among teachers to stop correcting papers using red ink, because ‘the red ink makes the children feel bad.’ Okay, just for a second ignore the fact that if they start using green or purple ink, soon kids will start feeling bad about seeing those colors on their papers. Instead think about how bass-ackwards it is to think that if a kid is upset because they have red all over their paper, the problem isn’t the kid and his issues, it’s THE FUCKING INK!

The Incredibles subtly points out the ridiculousness of such positions, and for that, it’s a much more solid work of art. It’s a truly life-affirming shot in the arm. This will be a movie that people are watching and enjoying twenty years from now. One of the best of the year.