Finding Nemo is a classic, a movie that exemplifies the contemporary suburban family virtues of love and commitment. In the characters of Marlin and his son Nemo, the director engages the audience in a hilarious and captivating narrative that borrows from cultural understanding and expectation of what family and friendship entail. Even as an animation, Finding Nemo is a narrative that captivates and engages audiences of all ages, through the balance in characterization and plot that ensures serious issues are addressed as much as one is entertained. However, even with this balance achieved, the movie can be said to deviate in certain elements in its plot, characterization and themes. In trying to create a socially-customized narrative, the director fails to challenge the boundaries of creative exposition and instead follows a rather precise understanding of contemporary social life.
Plot
The movie follows Nemo in his curiosity and desire to discover what lies outside the Great Reef Barrier, amidst his father overprotectiveness. His curiosity is the instigator that propels the whole narrative forward as every character emerges through Nemo’s adventure or his father’s quest to find his lost son. The director tries to disengage the plot from a distinct narrative of lost-and-found construct and instead indulges the audience in a divergent narrative that brings together different contrivances into a realistic narrative. In doing this, the externalities of assumed performance that allows all the targeted audience to both get entertained and derive meaning in the plot is lost. Instead, the audience is left with a rather beautiful aesthetic narrative that engages them but lacks in purposeful narrative. For instance, the two instances Nemo finds himself in the dentist office in Sydney, Australia and the events that happen before, during and after, provide no subject meaning to the whole narrative. It appears as ‘filler’ content where the director chooses to engage the audience in a prolonged visualization that is exciting but adds nothing to the whole plot. The director should have, instead, provided the audience with a continuance that allowed Nemo and Marlin to discharge purposeful intentions that give the other character their own identities rather than perform support roles that remove purpose in some parts of the plot.
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Themes
Family
Finding Nemo is a movie about family, and the director uses the virtues of family to propel the narrative in the characters of Marlin and Nemo. The use of a clownfish as the main character emphasizes the fragile nature of family life in contrast with the external dangers that endanger the family as a unit. This gives the movie a connection with both the grown-ups and the children as they all relate to the virtues of family and the need to protect. The director does an excellent job in contrasting two very different values in both the characters and the plot in an attempt to bring out the importance of family within this movie. However, the theme of family is only revealed in the characters of Nemo, Marlin and maybe Dory. The period in-between Marlin and Nemo separation and their reunion is an adventurous period that tells a story of personal failures and achievements, which deviates away from the importance of those values that epitomize family. The commitment of Marlin and then his rather easy acceptance of Nemo death after spending so much time and energy looking for him heavily contrasts with the idea of what family means to Marlin. The director, at some point, seems to lose direction and purpose in bringing out the importance of certain elements of the family as a significant theme in the movie.
Fear
Fear is a major theme that is carried throughout the whole movie as Nemo, his father, and those around them try to survive in a rather dangerous world. Marlin’s quote ‘be afraid. Be very afraid’ captures the danger that exists in this world where Nemo, his family and friends exists as the lowly, more vulnerable members of the society against a rather carnivorous neighborhood. The director uses the nature of the ocean to conceptualize the notion of fear as vital to the survival of this group of friends. An overall review of the whole movie, the theme of fear is not as obvious, and through the characters of Nemo (the main character), bravery is much better emphasized. The adventurous run of Nemo and the risks that Marlin takes in an effort to find his son are not actions of fear rather those of bravery. The theme of fear fails in its irrationality and in its somewhat naïve objectivity that fails once Marlin chooses to venture out and Nemo disregards his father’s advice. The importance of any theme within a narrative is to provide the plot with a continued endeavor that allows the main characters to grow out of the storyline. Fear only bequeaths bravery and does is not further utilized by the director to drive the narrative.
Conclusion
The few aspects of the movie Finding Nemo that fails it do not make it a bad or even a poorly created film. Instead, they highlight those individual features that usually characterize a well-directed film. The director tries to infuse all those features that ensure that audiences of all ages identify with the important elements of the movie. It is a film that is not only entertaining but also one that can be recommended both for family viewership and entertainment purposes, as it educates and encourages family-modelled discussion.
References
Finding Nemo . (2003). Retrieved from May 30, 2003
