The new production from Pixar studios is to be discovered in cinemas this Wednesday, June 21, 2023. Peter Sohn, director of Elementary, spoke about the creation of this personal animated film. Interview.
After toys, cars, insects, monsters and even fish, Pixar is venturing into the elements. Elementary is the latest from the studio with a bouncing lamp, and will be released in French cinemas this Wednesday, June 21, 2023. Viewers will be able to discover the romance between Flam, representative of fire, and Flack, being of water. Beyond this love story between two characters that everything opposes, the new Pixar film offers a touching and sincere metaphor on immigration and the weight that parents pass on to their children.
On the occasion of the release of Elementary, we met its director, Peter Sohn, to whom we owe The World of Arlo. The filmmaker, who was inspired by his own story to write his latest film, talks about the difficulties represented by this very personal film and its particularity within the large family of Pixar films. Our interview below.
Peter Sohn (director): It came to me seven years ago. I went back to New York, where I come from, to give a talk about art and Pixar. I invited my parents to this event, we were all dressed in our best costumes. Then, I went on stage, I saw them and I cried because I saw how old they were and how hard they had worked to get there. I was very touched by this. I put aside the speech I had prepared and simply said, “Mom, Dad, thank you so much for all the hard work and sacrifices you’ve made to give me and my brother a life. here.” I was very moved. I don’t know if you’ve done it in your life, but physically showing gratitude had a real impact on me. I went back to Pixar, I told this story, and they were like, “Peter, this is the next movie you need to do.” And that’s how it all started.
I think that was very naive of me. I knew, I think, that developing such a film could become complicated when it was inspired by a personal story. Because when it’s too personal, it’s very hard to change it for the good of the movie, it’s very hard to say, “no, no, that’s not how it’s supposed to be.”
On the other hand, I never wanted to do an autobiography. All of these elements inspired by my personal life were really small seeds that I hope resonated with the team so that we could create a new story, while remaining objective. Now I haven’t been 100% successful in doing this. My parents both died during the making of this film, and there were some very difficult times to go through. Because my parents were really the heart of this film.
When I was a child, in science class, I always drew characters inside the boxes of the periodic table of elements. It looked like an apartment building, like the ones I grew up in, and I laughed at them. Then when Pixar asked me to start this new movie, I took in some of my parents’ immigrant story and their time in New York, and just replaced it with elements. But I couldn’t use all the elements of the periodic table, it was too complicated, so I reduced it to the classical elements to represent this metaphor in a more visual and clear way.
Yes, it really had an impact. When I started writing the screenplay, I wanted to make a film that was hopeful, fun, with characters that intersect, mix, don’t mix, and build their lives in a new place. Then, within the first two years, my father passed away suddenly, and the story took a dark turn. The film was no longer hopeful, it became a story of war between a town and this family. There was a lot of anger and hatred.
After finishing this version, I showed it to a small group of people in the studio. They were all surprised by how dark it was and asked me if that was what I had originally planned to do, and I said, “No, no, no, no. I wanted to do something optimistic.” Then we built a story centered around love and connection. Then my mother passed away towards the end of production, and that had another effect on me as well.
When I started drawing the characters, I made a fire character next to a water character, and I immediately felt a tension, there was a conflict just drawing them. It reminded me of another personal story: I married someone who wasn’t Korean, and my dying grandmother’s last words were, “Marry a Korean girl!” I had enormous pressure since my childhood. I began to transpose this context into the relationship between fire and water. My first proposal to Disney was, “What if fire fell in love with water?” From the start, there was this romantic dimension. It was just about finding a balance. The main challenge of this film was not only to succeed in telling a love story in a romantic genre, which is very difficult to do since the audience has to become attached to the characters and feel their love, but also to make this story a family drama. And with the addition of the Great City of Elements, the challenge got more and more complex… That was probably the biggest challenge.
I think the biggest physical and practical challenge was the technical side of creating these characters. Pixar had never had characters made up of so many digital effects before. They were used to creating toys, cars, humans, but they had never had characters that moved so much (even when they were static). Every shot in this film is a digital effect, and that was the biggest challenge.
So I had to pave the way and find a way to incorporate fire into every shot of the film. Water was the biggest monster. Once we were successful with the fire, water was a problem in every shot: when changing the speed of the bubbles, Flack looked like jelly; when you removed the reflections, he looked like a ghost; when he was in the cellar, he disappeared; when he was on a roof, he became so bright that you couldn’t see him. Every shot was a real challenge.
