Love causes us to dream and do unimaginable things. For me, I am inspired by love. Not by watching some silly little chick flick or by hearing a tragic love story, but I’m inspired by watching Up, a simple children’s movie about love, friendship, and coping with loss.
When people think of the 2009 Disney movie Up, they might think of hundreds of balloons lifting a quaint, little house to travel to an exotic, far away land. However, when I watch the movie, I think of it as more than a ‘G’ rated children’s movie. To me, the most important part of the movie is the life-long love story between characters Carl and Ellie that grows from childhood friendship and ends seventy years later with Ellie passing away.
My friends always joke with me because I say that I don’t want love unless it’s what Carl and Ellie have in Up. I explain to them how I want a lifelong partner who I can always count on, share my dreams with, and also be my best friend, and that is exactly the kind of love that is portrayed between Carl and Ellie’s relationship in Up. What my friends don’t know is that I aspire to be like Carl and Ellie because they remind me of a love which I have witnessed. A love that I hold dear. It is that kind of love–full of one simple dream and a life-long commitment to each other–that really inspires me.
Early in the movie, a montage of Carl and Ellie’s life-long journey of friendship, falling in love, partnership, and marriage is shown. And, as the montage reveals, year after year, their dream of travelling to Paradise Falls in South America somehow never happens. Life always gets in the way. After Ellie dies, Carl is a lost soul without his beloved Ellie by his side. Carl eventually makes the decision to take a wild journey with an unexpected and annoying boy scout, Kevin. Later, we find out that Ellie, although she always wanted to travel with Carl to a far away land, was fulfilled simply by Carl’s love for her and their life they created together. Ellie didn’t need exotic travels. All she needed was Carl’s love, and she treasured his love every day with no regrets.
What inspires me even more about the love story in the movie is the similarity of Carl and Ellie’s relationship to that of my grandparents’. Much like Carl and Ellie, my grandparents, Ron and Carol, were childhood sweethearts. My grandfather’s sole purpose in life was to make my grandmother’s dreams come true and simply to make her happy. That was Carl’s dream, too. It was my grandfather’s choice to hand off his life into my grandmother’s hands, and she kept his heart right with hers until the day she died, just like Ellie in Up. But as with Carl, my grandpa had a hard time letting his “Ellie” go. Both Carl and my grandfather were left as half a person when their wives died and both men didn’t know what to do without their life partners. Carl decided to take a journey to a far off land to find his way, and my grandfather found new hobbies and expanded new friendships to find his. Both men went through an emotional adventure in order to heal and become happy. Although both men cherish the memory of their wives, their one true loves, both pushed forth to continue to live their lives without regrets. And both men did this out of love.
Up inspires me mostly because it is a cartoon version of what I’ve witnessed in my own family. This movie shows me that sometimes Hollywood films are more than just fiction. And, with a little touch of Disney magic, love stories and dreams really do come true. And that is what makes life worth living.
Note from Ronda:
If you like the essay Carrie wrote, please click on this link and rank it. This is for a scholarship to B.G.S.U. (my alma mater that I hold near and dear to my heart). Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
