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Life Lessons from Sea Monsters Pixar’s Luca swimmingly showcases very human struggles and triumphs By Ca ro l Bada r acco Padge t t
Y ou know we underdogs have to look out for each other, right?” asks Giulia, the spunky red-haired girl from Portorosso, a fictional seaside town on the Italian Riv- iera in Pixar’s latest, Luca . Giulia (Emma Berman) is just one of the stellar characters in the summer 2021 animated film directed by Enrico Casarosa, produced by Andrea Warren, and released on Disney+. As Pixar films tend to do, Luca completely captivates and give us glimpses of ourselves in its characters—never mind the fact that Luca (Jacob Tremblay) is a tweenage sea monster. Of feeling the odd sea-monster out—a strong theme throughout—Casarosa spoke to slashfilm.com about his own childhood, “I just felt like an outsider, and my best friend and I were feeling a little nerdy and losery and there were always cooler people that we were looking toward.” And of Luca’s message, “… we knew from day one that it’s a wonderful prism for the audience to come in and bring their own experience of feeling ‘other.’” As the film begins, a fishing boat chugs along at nighttime toward a little island off the coast of Portorosso, its two-man Italian crew bantering about sea monsters. As one man squirms, “Do we really need to fish near the island? What if the old stories are true?” The other shrugs, “You worry too much … you really believe in sea monsters?” As the fishermen prepare their net, a rogue young sea monster spots them from below. He swims to the surface, reaches up and over the side of the boat, and begins snatching human tools and trinkets. Until…. his unhuman hand and glowing eyes are spotted. And he makes a narrow escape. The next morning, Luca unknowingly swims below; a colorful young sea monster herding his family’s flock of fish to shallow feeding grounds. There, he meets the young sea monster thief from the night before, Alberto (Jack Dylan Grazer), who teaches Luca what happens when they step on land: a metamorphosis to human when dry, sea monster when wet. “It’s an adaptation—like camouflage,” says Casarosa in an interview on pixar.com. “It explains why sea monsters haven’t been noticed in this world for centuries.” Luca gets into trouble with his parents as his curiosity about the world beyond the sea increasingly draws him into the dangerous human world. At her wit’s end, his mother threatens to send him “to the deep” to live with his uncle.
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Soon, Luca and Alberto hatch a plan to buy a Vespa, escape, and travel the world. So together, cliffside, they prepare to jump off into the sea and swim to nearby Portorosso. The carefree Alberto leaps first, while Luca summons the courage to follow by shouting the film’s most famous line, “Silenzio Bruno!” (Silence, Bruno!), Bruno being the voice inside each of us that holds us back—that tells us we can’t possibly prevail. “Luca is someone who is very self-limiting, insecure,” Casarosa told gamesradar.com, adding, “the metaphor was, truthfully, a literal and metaphorical push off a cliff.” And it’s one that struck a personal chord. “I’m a first-time director, so imposter syndrome was my Bruno while making [the film].” After the plunge and the swim to Portorosso, the two friends—literally fish out of water among the town’s residents—meet and team up with the spirited Giulia for the town triathlon, the Portorosso Cup, hoping to win money for their Vespa. As Luca and Alberto train and bond with Giulia, the secret of their true identity remains. Only Giulia’s grumpy cat, Machiavelli, smells something fishy.
In a wild romp around Portorosso, the young sea monsters in human form struggle to stay dry and fight off the town bully, Ercole (Saverio Raimondo). Soon though, tensions arise when Alberto becomes jealous of the friendship between Luca and Giulia, and he dives into the water to expose their secret. As bully Ercole sees and comes running, harpoon in hand, Luca stands on the beach with terrified Giulia and points at the “Sea monster!” Betrayed, Alberto swims away. True friendship wins out in the end, though, when Alberto returns to help his friends win the Portorosso Cup. As rain pours down on the boys and their true identity is revealed, Giulia, her father, Luca’s sea monster parents, and the whole village gathers around. There’s more, and it’s touching… something to watch for oneself. In the end, Luca offers life lessons to take away: In this world, beneath our obvious differences lie striking similarities. True friends are worth a second chance. And “Silenzio Bruno!” of course.
@pixarluca
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