Daniel Guerrero

Film representing a culture from different heritage is difficult to construct over time. However, “Coco” does not disappoint where it comes to this.

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The idea of the film did not came to mind until after the release of Toy Story 3. Lee Unkrich, the director of Toy Story 3, pitch the idea of an American child learning about his Mexican heritage after dealing with the death of his mother. However, he scrapped that idea where the film should reflect on the Mexican culture, entirely. Therefore, this lead to Unkrich to be focusing on a Mexican child instead. From there on, Unkrich and his team would make several trips Mexico in order to construct some research of the film. In the process of making this film, Unkrich was full of anxiety because he knew he needed to make this film right.

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The story focuses on a 12 year old Mexican child name Miguel, who wants to purse in music. However, his family forbids him from pursuing due to their history with music. To further explain this, Miguel’s great great grandfather left the family and never return because he wanted to pursue in music instead. Because of this, Miguel is force to help the family’s show business by polishing and making shoes. One evening of Dia de los Muertos, he decided to enter the music contest while abandoning his family due to dealing with a complicated situation with them and evoking a sense of anger. However, he did not have a music instrument to play with. This leads him to steal Ernesto de La Cruz’s guitar in the cemetery because he believed that was his great great grandfather where he stumbled over a picture frame on the ofrenda that had same guitar as him earlier in film. However, the picture did not have his face on it because his family wants to forget him entirely. Therefore, this leads to Miguel believing that Ernesto is his great great grandfather. When Miguel obtain the dusted famous guitar and played with it, he entered a whole different world that he is able to see the dead in their skeletal form. This was called the Land of the Dead. From there, Miguel would run into multiple character and a huge conflict that he needs to solve over time.

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I enjoyed the voice work from the cast throughout the film where they perfectly apply a sense of attitude to their characters when they run into different situations.  An example of this can be represented in the middle of the third act where Mama Imelda encounters Hector. During this conversation, Imelda expresses her feelings towards him which has the audience to feel bad for the pain she had to go through over time. Plus, at the same time, the audience would want to have hope for Mamá Imelda to listen to Hector where he does not have any time left to survive in the Land of the Dead.

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Besides the acting, the cinematography is amazing which makes the films really stand out. When Miguel and his street dog, Danté, enter the Land of the Dead, Miguel was surprise as he observe the land itself. This connects the great use of the cinematography, it has the audience to look at the land from Miguel perspective where they can observe vast land in a landscape view. Also, the color really pops in the Land of the Dead where it is somewhere the audience would want to explore similar to Pandora in the film, “Avatar”. Therefore, throughout the film, the audience would the observe these type of colors to be stand out all the time.

Along with the cinematography, the story progresses at a good pace and is interesting as well. Meaning, that the story is structured a great way where hooks the audience easily.

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Overall, Coco is great film where it is full of surprises and represent the Mexican culture at its best.

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