This one is all about ijirashii.
In her excellent volume The Book of Human Emotions, Tiffany Watt-Smith deals with many of the main emotions we all know and love (fear, anger, guilt…etc.) as well as identifying all kinds of lesser-known emotions that have been named in other cultures but not in our own. (e.g. Malu: an Indonesian term for the feeling of awkward, constricted inferiority we feel around people of higher status.)
Ijirashii is a particularly good one, and comes to us from Japan. Watt defines it as “the sensation of being touched or moved on seeing the little guy overcome an obstacle.” It’s a David beats Goliath thing. It’s that swell of emotion at witnessing an unexpected moment of triumph from one who we might have thought weak or vulnerable. And it’s at the heart of so many great movie moments.
This one, from The Incredibles, lasts just a couple of seconds, but it slays me every time I see it. Or rather hear it. It’s just this little laugh, you see. But it means so much.
On most days, The Incredibles is my favourite Pixar movie. It’s actually tied for first with Ratatouille, the two films jostling and occasionally inching past one another, depending in large part on how hungry I am. These two films come from the incredibly fertile period when Pixar seemed incapable of making a weak film (okay, Cars came close). From their debut Toy Story in 1995 all the way through Up in 2005, they gave us home run after home run, brand new idea upon brand new idea (except Toy Story 2), each one a fully realised world. As I scan the slate of upcoming Pixar projects, my heart sinks slightly as I see only one brand new original feature in the next five years (next year’s Coco), the rest being sequels. Even the prospect of The Incredibles 2 in 2019 does not lighten my heart, despite the reassuring presence of Brad Bird’s name.
I’m sure The Incredibles 2 will be gorgeous to look at, funny as hell, and packed with hyper-kinetic action sequences. But will it be able to break my heart? Because what amazes me most about The Incredibles is how it manages to function so perfectly as a rollicking action romp while also being so consistently insightful about what it means to be part of a family: to be a parent, a spouse, a sibling, a child.
Most superhero films phone in their emotional stuff, as if it were the spinach they have to choke down before they can gleefully dig into the creamy dessert of large-scale CGI destruction. The Incredibles, on the other hand, totally satisfies on both levels. In fact, its success depends on our investment in the characters’ relationships – their struggles, sacrifices, disappointments and fears. This investment enhances and enriches the experience of seeing them in action.
Full disclosure: my kids ARE Violet and Dash. My daughter is just entering teenagerhood, a time when a Violet-esque invisibility and force-shield would be just the perfect superpower. And my son, right around Dash’s age, is a virtually inexhaustible dynamo, squirming, fidgeting, rolling around kicking the walls, forever sprinting from point A to point B and back again (“Hey dad/mum! Time me!”).
But of course every kid’s superpowers are still unfolding. Like Jack-Jack in this film’s fantastic closing scene, any kid may at any point discover some dormant ability or interest that will totally shape the way they interact with the world. Our job as parents is, among other things, to help our kids discover and nurture their own particular set of superpowers.
If you’ll excuse a moment of parental pride (I swear it’s leading somewhere) my daughter recently picked up her violin and figured out, from memory, L’amour Est Un Oiseau Rebelle, from Bizet’s ‘Carmen.’ She did it so casually, almost out of boredom, but my wife and I were stunned at this superhuman display. It was as if she had taken flight, or burst into flames. My son, meanwhile, is becoming a dedicated tennis player. With his 1980s headband firmly in place he is starting to spank me all over the court, sending me sprinting left and right at his whim, drawing me up to the net in pursuit of a cheeky drop shot, then cruelly lobbing me, clearing my upstretched racquet and landing the ball six inches inside the baseline. He’s getting better every time we play, and I’m not.
And every once in a while, when he floats a lob just beyond my reach, or blasts a passing shot past me as I stand helpless at the net, or wrong-foots me with a fiendish cross-court backhand, I see a quick moment of pride flash across his face, and I am a mess of parental ijirashii. I am the giant, and he has defeated me. And I love it.
That’s why this Small Moment means so much to me. Late in the film, Dash has been separated from his sister and is sprinting his way through the jungle in a sequence that has a whiff of ‘video game tie-in’ about it.
He is being pursued by Frisbee-like aircraft piloted by henchmen of the film’s villain, Syndrome (one of my tiny grumbles with the film is that I can’t help thinking Pixar could have come up with a better bad-guy name – somehow this one doesn’t quite land. Never mind.) In an earlier scene, his mother has impressed upon him that these bad guys will show him no mercy. They will kill him. If they come for him, she wants him to run as fast as he can. (“As fast as I can!??” he delightedly asks, in another moment that unaccountably brings a lump to my throat.)
The jungle chase is brilliantly executed. One thing Brad Bird does very well is to map out the logistics of an action scene. We are always very aware of where everyone is in relation to one another, which direction they’re moving, and how fast. So many action directors fail to clear this low hurdle, but Bird soars over it. Each beat of this sequence has a pleasing click to it, so when Dash is tearing away from his pursuers and suddenly an expanse of blue water hoves into view, we share his moment of panic.
And then it happens. He runs on water. The pitter-patter of his feet becomes a frantic splish-splash, and he just keeps on going.
In this moment, despite all the chaos and peril around him, Dash looks down and allows himself a tiny moment of disbelieving glee. The laugh he emits at 2:22 in the above linked video (tip of the hat to voice actor Spencer Fox) is just this tiny expression of wonder but it’s also got a little swagger to it. It says “Of course. I’m incredible.” And the pleasure it gives him is so palpable, it gives me goosebumps. And I’m not alone – a quick skim of the YouTube comments attached to this video reveals that many, many others felt the same way.
As we head into another summer season packed with wall-to-wall superhero movies, I’m deeply unenthused. With no worlds left to conquer, our lycra-clad saviours are turning on each other. In DC-world, Batman and Superman are endlessly flinging one another into buildings, while over in Marvel-ville, much the same thing is happening with Iron Man and Captain America. It’s almost as if they’ve got their superpowers, they know what they can do now, they’re bored, and they’re taking their boredom out on each other.
Personally I’d like to grab all four of these gloomy Goliaths (plus a few others who seem similarly disaffected), clonk their heads together, grab each of them by the ear and force them to sit down and watch this Small Moment a few times.
Guys! Stop glowering! You’re incredible! Enjoy it!
Small Moments in Big Movies 
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