Coco: Watching Films Intended for Another Audience.

About a third into Coco and I find myself watching closely, but bored. The story and sleek but fantastical animation, like most Pixar films, draws you in and keeps you engaged—but the film gives little more than emotional engagement. However this is nothing different than what I anticipated, a film which ropes you in emotionally but upon ending gives little to think about. It engages with important themes promoting a contemporary balance between a traditional family and self-identity, but only scratching the surface and ending—of course—in an idyllic reunion filled with love and acceptance. Of course, still this is nothing I didn’t expect, then why was I bored?

Simply put, I am not the intended audience of Coco. I am neither a child who gets lost in its colours and fast-moving emotional narrative, nor a parent who can experience the joy vicariously through their child. But I am not the intended audience for a number of reasons, not just age. Being someone who lives and breathes film and wanting to be challenged by what I watch I, of course, receive little of this challenge from a Pixar film. But just because I am not a member of the intended audience does that mean I by default won’t enjoy the film? This I am not sure about. I would like to answer no, as in other circumstances I’m sure I have enjoyed films not intended for me—take for example a film like Rogue One, which I did enjoy (even if it left me with the same hollow feeling leaving the cinema). Similarly I know Iman thoroughly enjoyed Coco when he watched it, so can any generalisation really be made?

I, as you have probably gathered over the writings on this thread, am very critical of films after I have seen them—obviously not unfairly, simply in a way to analyse, probe and understand why I liked/disliked certain elements—and in many ways I find a great deal of pleasure in this. But this criticism often arises from the very challenge I search for in a film, if it be challenging my aesthetic taste, challenging my understanding of people or what I believe film is. Thus, we could argue I will always enjoy a film that challenges me more than one which doesn’t—even if I were to rate the less challenging film higher on a conventional scale. Thus, as I take pleasure from probing the film—especially formally—this may be one of the reasons I disliked my experience watching Coco. It delivered exactly, to the tee, what I was expecting from a Pixar animation, and thus I wasn’t given real space to analyse anything which grated/challenged my aesthetic or filmic taste in either a positive or negative light—and this lead to the boredom which kicked in 1/3 into the film. The film is by no means boring as we would usually use the word—it uses bright colours, moves quickly and pulls on your heart—but it simply isn’t intellectually stimulating in any way. But again, can this be a critique of the film because it clearly isn’t trying to challenge the conventions of cinema, art or present controversial and challenging material.

This brings us on to a larger question, which I will let roll around in your head. Should we be rate something for what it was trying to achieve, or should we rate it fairly amongst the rest of our repertoire of that thing? For example is it fair to put Coco next to Tarkovsky or Zhangke (my personal favourites) and see what it achieves, or should we restrict our comparisons to other films in the genre? Or should we simply be rating it as a stand-alone without comparison? Obviously the last is the ideal, but we are always quick to compare to other referents.

Do you rate something for achieving it’s goal, or do you criticise it if that goal is too simplistic and short-sighted for your taste?

**This conundrum plays into the problems the film, and films like it, have with our rating system. As stated, they aren’t trying to revolutionise cinema and thus are more likely to lose points in the Appolonian/intellectual category of our ratings. But, as stated before, our system is one which strongly favours these things far above being a ‘good film’.

Coco (2017)

2/2/0

4/13

~Leo