A Review of Coco: Remembering Our Loss of Loved Ones in the Post-Pandemic Era

If you have ever experienced or are currently experiencing the loss of a loved one, the movie Coco can bring you comfort and is worth watching again and again.

This film was released in 2017, before the world was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, five years later, the pandemic's impact on the world is immeasurable. We have all lost something and experienced some trauma. Our self-preservation instinct as humans sometimes makes us deliberately forget the things that cause us pain, such as the loss of a loved one. But if we revisit this animated movie, we may find the courage to look back on our losses of the past few years.

Pixar animation always manages to handle serious themes, such as death, in a fairy tale way.

Fear of death and the instinct to survive are both part of human nature. Typically, culture or religion provides us with a set of ways to cope with death. Our funeral customs and ancestor worship activities are all about constructing a world after death for the living. Through these customs, we believe that people do not simply vanish after death, but are instead permanently separated from the living.

We rely on such methods to overcome not only the sadness of losing our loved ones, but also the fear of our own death. However, these methods are not always effective.

In East Asian cultures, there is generally a hesitancy to discuss the afterlife, and there is no clear consensus on what happens after death. Instead, people tend to focus on the present world, seeking to avoid thinking about death. Although everyone knows that death is inevitable, people often act as if it is a remote reality. Death is considered taboo, and people avoid situations associated with it, believing that doing otherwise will bring bad luck. When confronted with death, such as when a loved one passes away, people tend to grieve in silence.

This is a way of avoiding the topic. However, Mexican culture has a very different perspective on death.

Octavio Paz, a Mexican Nobel laureate, wrote the following in El laberinto de la soledad:

"For the inhabitant of New York, Paris or London, death is a word never spoken, because it burns the lips. But the Mexican, on the other hand, frequents it, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it, it is one of his favorite toys and his most lasting love."

Para el habitante de Nueva York, París o Londres, la muerte es la palabra que jamás se pronuncia porque quema los labios. El mexicano, en cambio, la frecuenta, la burla, la acaricia, duerme con ella, la festeja, es uno de sus juguetes favoritos y su amor más permanente.

Perhaps due to this cultural background, the film Coco is able to explore the topic of death in a fairy tale-like way.

As an animated film, Coco's visual effects demonstrate Pixar's extraordinary level of skill. In the film, the afterlife world is colorful and bright,. Flowers flow like waterfalls on the bridge of the dead, and buildings are filled with colorful lights, music, dance, and celebrations everywhere. In such a shining world, death is no longer dark and scary, but more like an adventure full of surprises.

This is very shocking and inspiring to me, as I am used to avoiding death.However, this is not a completely unrealistic fantasy world. The film has a clever design: a large skyscraper in the afterlife world, from top to bottom, shows present-day Mexico: the underdeveloped south, the commercially prosperous center, and the industrially intensive north.

The orange flower seen throughout the film is the Aztec marigold (also known as the Mexican marigold or the Cempasúchil). The flower is used in the tradition of Dia de los Muertos in Mexico to guide the deceased to the living.

It includes many similar details, such as the altar at home, the decoration of the cemetery, skeleton candies, skeleton makeup, and ubiquitous colored paper cutting.

The real reproduction of details of the Dia de los Muertos customs is also a core reason why this film is recognized. On the one hand, it introduces Mexico's fantastic culture to audiences in other regions through a sensory feast. On the other hand, it also extracts universal cultural propositions from such fantasies, such as love, family, and dreams.

Its success is also due to the use of a special cultural perspective to answer a question that everyone cares about: how to deal with the death of a loved one. In modern society, this is not an easy question to answer.

We used to believe in the afterlife, so we believed that we would meet again someday, and the deceased would accompany us in the form of a soul. However, in modern society, as we begin to look at death from a scientific perspective, the concept of an afterlife has gradually disappeared. At this point, do our funeral customs and attempts to communicate with our ancestors still make sense? Does the act of commemorating the deceased become a performance for the living?

For this question, the movie Coco gives me a self-consistent answer.

A person's true death is not the moment when their body stops breathing, but when the last person in the world who remembers them leaves and no one remembers them. So, during the Day of the Dead, people light fires everywhere to honor their ancestors and remind those who have passed away that they still live on in people's hearts.

There is a similar tradition in my hometown. During the Mid-July festival, we create paper gold ingots and other items, wrap them in paper packages, and write the address and sender's name on them.

On the day of the festival, we go to sweep the tombs, light candles, and burn the packages. During this process, children listen to stories about their deceased relatives from adults. This allows us to remember our loved ones who have passed away and learn about our ancestors.

I used to not understand the meaning of this ritual because I was convinced that these customs were feudal superstitions. But later, I gradually discovered that the focus of all this is not on the specific form of the ceremony, but on the memories and nostalgia for the deceased that are evoked through the process.

Realizing this, I was moved to tears while watching Coco. I have experienced all of this before. For a long time after my mother passed away, I dared not look at her old photos. I pretended that nothing had happened and continued with my normal life. But there is always a moment when you suddenly think of her, think of her death, and then feel overwhelming sadness.

As time passed, I gradually overcame my sadness, and remembering her became a comfort. I started to recall and document the things she said to me, the moments we experienced together many years ago, and her kindness, beauty, and loveliness. Remembering that she once lived vibrantly and lovingly in this world gave me an incredibly happy life with all her love.

As described in "Coco", as long as I remember her, as long as there are people in this world who still remember and love her, she has not really disappeared, she lives on in my heart.

My memories extend her life. I became the Coco in my world.

I think this has also become my attitude towards life: even if everything will eventually disappear one day, I will be grateful that fate once allowed me to have it.

However, in my opinion, Coco is not perfect either. The main conflict at the beginning of the story is that the boy's musical dream is met with opposition from his family, so he embarks on a dream journey alone. But as the story unfolds, the conflict between dreams and reality is simplified. The boy's dream seems to be presented as a pursuit of success and idol worship. The misunderstandings of the family are also eliminated as the boy embarks on his dream journey.

This is disappointing for those who expect more depth and complexity in the film.But the merits of Coco outweigh its flaws. The film discusses the topic of death in a way that almost everyone can accept with warmth and joy. This alone makes Coco a masterpiece in animation history.

The movie also rekindles our belief that deep down in the human heart, we all share the same emotions of love and nostalgia. The film evokes these emotions, breaking through the limitations of time and space, which is the true charm of the movie. In this era of lost values, I believe that this aspect of the film is still important.

At the end of the closing credits, there is an ofrenda to the deceased people who inspired the filmmakers of Coco, in the form of a mosaic made from photographs.

Through this detail, we can also feel the sincerity and dedication of the creative team. I hope that the emotions this film brings us can help us have more courage to face the losses of the past few years in five years.