Film Review: Elemental might be simplistic, but its call for tolerance is irresistible

Disney Pixar's Elemental.

• Elemental
• ★★★★☆
• Cinema release

It was Aristotle, of course, who decided that the basic elements were fire, water, earth, and air. Pixar’s latest offering Elemental (G) only needs two of those elements: Ember (Leah Lewis), composed of fire, is the first-generation daughter of immigrants from Fireland, who keep to themselves while running a café in a ghetto of Element City, a metropolis that resembles a gigantic water park.

In a society that operates according to a strict caste system, Ember has been raised to distrust the dominant elite of the water-folk, but when she encounters Wade (Mamoudou Athie), a city inspector checking a leak that has sprung in the basement of her parents’ café, Ember discovers Wade is nothing like the monstrous creatures her parents have warned her about.

But given that Wade can extinguish Ember, and that she can vaporise him, is any future possible for these star-cross’d lovers? Written by John Hoberg, Kat Likkel, and Brenda Hsueh, and directed by Peter Sohn, Elemental retells the old Romeo and Juliet/West Side Story tale in stark terms — in Element City, the various elements are potentially lethal to one another — in the process engaging with the immigrant experience, racism, and mutual mistrust.

Leah Lewis and Mamoudou Athie star in Elemental.

Visually, it’s a movie of sharp distinctions: Ember’s spiky and vibrant orange-and-red palette contrasts with Wade’s softer lines and pale blue shades, which reinforces the sense of simmering rage the underclass feels when it clashes with the cool, constant flow of long-established privilege (that too much water represents an existential threat to the Fireland ghetto is not only a nod to climate change but also allows the writers to include a cheeky nod to Chinatown). 

It may be a touch simplistic in its storytelling by comparison with some of Pixar’s finer moments of recent years, but Elemental is a vividly drawn animation and a heartfelt plea for toleration that feels churlish to resist.