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TechnoratiWhen Ellie dies, Carl returns to their house, which becomes a shrine to what he had. As the years pass, all of the property around him has become a construction site for a downtown development, but Carl has refused to sell out. While machines rumble by, kicking up dirt, Carl carefully dusts the items on the mantle, making certain to put them back just so. Ellie and Carl’s chairs are just as they were on the day she left for the hospital. The house is a museum, with no room for anything or anyone new. Carl cannot even be bothered to work with eight-year-old Russell, a Junior Wilderness Explorer who knocks on his door to “be of assistance.” And when Carl’s treasured mailbox, decorated with the faded paint of his and Ellie’s handprints, is knocked loose by a careless construction worker, Carl loses it and strikes the man with his walking cane. The developers seize their chance, take Carl to court, and he is remanded to the care of a retirement home. All that he holds dear is about to be taken from him.
But there is life in the old guy yet.
When the orderlies from the Shady Oaks Retirement Home come for Carl, he is ready. He pulls a ripcord, thousands of balloons emerge, and his house rises into the air. Carl has aroused himself from his complacency to take one last big chance. He is navigating their home, their “Adventurers’ clubhouse,” to Paradise Falls. Of course, Carl shortly discovers that there is a new, inadvertent member of the Adventurers Club when Russell knocks on the door of the flying house. Carl is officially unretired. He is on a mission.
The older we get, the more of our life is behind us, and the less before us. So many people find themselves grasping tightly to the past, holding on to things as if they were holding on to life. But things are not life. The past is not life. In the Gospels, Jesus calls a man to follow Him. The man replies that he must go back to bury his father. Jesus’ reply was that the dead should bury their own dead – and again invites the man to follow him (Matthew 8:21-22). Life moves forward. Remembering the past is good – it reminds us of how we came to be who we are. But clinging to the past is death, even if you are still alive.
John Eldredge, author of Wild at Heart, argues that all men need a battle to fight, a beauty to win, and an adventure to live. But what of the elderly man who has already fought battles, won and lost his beauty, and is at the end of his life? What remains for him to do? Our culture’s response is retirement. God’s response is to retrench.
What turns Carl around is the sense that he still has something to do. He was going nowhere, but when circumstances intervened, he found that he was going somewhere. Carl thinks that the answer to his life’s malaise is a trip to Paradise Falls to keep his final promise to his wife. He is almost like an elephant seeking the burial grounds. But what he discovers is that his life’s value is not merely in what has gone before, but what is still to come. In this case, Carl is rejuvenated when he fights a new battle, wins new beauties, and sets off on a new adventure; one substantially different from the kind normally associated with risk.
Whoever Seeks to Keep His Life Will Lose It
Carl is not the only elderly man in this film. As children, Carl and Ellie idolized the young explorer Charles Muntz, vowing to follow him to Paradise Falls one day for adventures of their own. But Muntz is humiliated when a giant bird skeleton he exhibits is wrongly deemed a fraud by a geographical society. Muntz vows to go back to Paradise Falls and not to return until he captures the bird and clears his name. But when Carl and Russell finally land in Paradise Falls, they discover that Muntz is still there, seeking his elusive quarry. Continue »
