By: Elena Donatone
Inside Out (2015) is one of the best and most original animated films Disney Pixar produced in the last decade.
The film follows the life of an 11 year old girl, Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) and her ups and downs related to moving from Minnesota to San Francisco, due to her father’s job.
Riley suffers a lot from the move and she misses her friends and her old life very much… and to make the matter worse, she has to deal with so many emotions as an 11 year old girl.
Emotions that in the film are represented through hilarious and genius animated characters!
From Joy to Anger, from Fear to Disgust, all the emotions are there to help Riley coping with challenges and dangers in her everyday life. Each emotion has a specific role and Joy (Amy Poehler) is the one in charge, making sure Riley is happy all the time!
“We love our girl. She’s got great friends and a great house. Things couldn’t be better.”
The only emotion that doesn’t seem to have a purpose and that all the others always ignore and leave behind is Sadness (Phyllis Smith).
Sadness doesn’t appear to have an important role in the girl’s life. As a matter of fact, most of the time she just ends up getting Riley in trouble with her “sadness”.
“Crying helps me slow down and obsess over the weight of life’s problems.”
As Riley gets more and more affected by the move to San Francisco, Sadness only makes it worse, by accidentally transforming some of her core happy memories into sad ones. Because of that, Riley starts getting detached from all her personality traits that make her who she is.
Joy decides to save Riley and embarks on an adventure through the girl’s mind to do so. As Sadness gets on board by mistake, Joy keeps on treating her as usual, not understanding what her role is beside crying and being a downer all the time.
“I’m too sad to walk. Just give me a few hours.”
But as we see towards the end of the movie, Sadness is the one that manages to help Riley with her problems. When Sadness takes over Riley’s brain, the girl finally talks openly about her discomfort of living in a new city and how much she misses Minnesota. The parents are there to listen and they understand and comfort Riley, letting her know it is normal to be sad and to miss her former home.
“I know you don’t want me to, but I miss home. I miss Minnesota. You need me to be happy, but I want my old friends, and my hockey team. I wanna go home, please don’t be mad.”
That’s when all the other emotions understand how important Sadness really is.
Sadness, as any other emotion, is there to help Riley. It turns out, Joy shouldn't always be the one in charge.
And isn’t that true in real life as well?
How many times do we all reject and ignore sadness and pain in our lives, trying to be happy all the time? And how many times does society tell us to be joyful and hide our sorrows?
As the film teaches us, it is impossible to always be happy, and when sadness comes you need to embrace it. It is temporary but it is just as important of an emotion as joy and anger are.
We need sadness to “take over” sometimes in order to process painful events we are going through. As shown in Inside Out, the more you fight sadness, the more it will affect your well-being.
When Riley finally gives in to sadness, she actually shares a very sweet moment with her parents. Sadness is not something to be ashamed of, it is a natural emotion we feel and it has a purpose.
Sadness, just like in the film, helps us feeling and understanding the pain.
As Sadness teaches us: acknowledge the value of sadness in your life and speak up to your loved ones about it. It will definitely help you!
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