the animation studio Pixar prepares to surprise us again with “Elemental” starting June 16, when it opens in theaters. The film transports us to a world inhabited by beings made up of the four elements: water, earth, air and fire.
The protagonists of “Elemental” are Ember -a young woman made of fire- and Wade -a boy made of water-. Two incompatible characters but destined to meet in the peculiar Element City.
Peter Sohn, the director of “Elemental” (and before “The Good Dinosaur”), revealed to us why this original story had been around his head for more than 10 years. The keys are three, in his own words:
1. “My parents came to New York from Korea in the 1960s and opened a grocery store in the Bronx,” Sohn explains. At the beginning of “Elemental” you can see how a couple from the fire family arrives in the city without speaking the language and opens a store that targets their community in a suburb of Element City.
2. “Since I was little I was fascinated by the periodic table of elements, which seemed to me like apartment buildings in a city,” says the director, who created the city in the film with a clear influence from New York and with a multitude of high-rise buildings. different elements.
3. “My wife’s experience of marrying a non-Korean person,” says Sohn, who says that although he was born in the United States, in this country he has felt discriminated against and, in his parents’ native Korea, they also made him see that it was not from there. This uprooting experience is very common among immigrants and the first generations, and is reflected in the film.
By the way, Sohn says that the last thing his grandmother said to him before she died was: “Marry a Korean woman.”
In addition to these three experiences in the life of Peter Sohn with which many of us can identify, the director of “Elemental” started from a premise: opposites attract.
This is the case with Ember, fire, and Wade, water. “Elemental” is, above all, a love story.