Whenever I’m grieving, I find myself attached to something unrelated: a movie, a song, a walking route through my neighborhood. As fires burned through Los Angeles earlier this year, only miles from where I live, I turned to baking. (By the end of the news cycle, I had made multiple loaves of bread, two pavlovas, and at least one cake.) Getting over a breakup, I watched the movie RRR too many times to share without embarrassment. Reeling after an unexpected move that forced me to reestablish my entire community, I walked an average of five miles a day. When I lost my grandfather last year, I started crocheting. I only knew one pattern—but I made that crochet tulip bookmark again and again as if my life depended on it.
I always feel as if these hyperfixations will solve something for me. When my emotions feel uncontrollable, I grasp for control via unrelated activities—through perfecting my bread dough’s proofing time or interlocked rows of stitches.
For Elio (Yonas Kibreab), the eponymous lead in Pixar’s latest animated film, grief manifests in wanting, desperately, to be abducted by aliens. Grief makes Elio feel isolated, as if he doesn’t belong on earth. So he puts his hope in space.
Elio is classic Pixar; I was crying within 15 minutes and regretted not bringing tissues to the theater. The production design is stunning; characters done in the same cutesy animation style (known as bean mouth) as Turning Red, Bao, and Win or Lose turn what could otherwise be scary or grotesque into charming comedy. With writing that’s genuinely entertaining for children and adults, the story gives dignity to children’s inner lives in a manner similar to last year’s The Wild Robot.
After all this praise, a caveat: Elio did poorly in the box office. But as you can tell, I came out of the theater an Elio evangelist.
At the beginning of the film, Olga (Zoe Saldaña), Elio’s aunt and recently appointed legal guardian, struggles to get Elio to eat or talk. He hides under a table, then sneaks away into a closed exhibit about the Voyager spacecraft. A voiceover explains that the spacecraft’s mission is to discover whether humans are truly alone. As Elio lies on the floor, his tears imply that he too is questioning his aloneness.
Elio, it turns out, has recently lost his parents, and his life has been flipped upside down by the tragedy. So has Olga’s; she’s had to put aside her aspirations of being an astronaut to take care of Elio. Multiple coworkers ask why she is not taking advantage of career opportunities—and while Elio never acknowledges these comments, we can infer by his actions that he sees himself as the reason Olga’s life has been put on pause. At one point in the film, she sighs and says, “I didn’t ask for this,” a comment that comes from not bitterness but helplessness.
Elio, an imaginative and inquisitive boy, struggles to communicate his emotions about his loss. Instead, in his grief, he develops a love of space and focuses his energy on getting abducted by aliens. While his obsession seems outlandish at first, we come to understand it. He admits that his home is gone now that his parents are no longer with him, and he interprets Olga’s frustration and misunderstandings as her not wanting or loving him. He struggles to make friends and assumes that his only hope for a community that understands him is somewhere other than earth.
The movie follows Elio as he gets what he wants: Assumed to be the leader of earth, he is tasked with saving the universe from a galactic war. He makes a new friend who helps him feel less alone. In his desire for belonging, he lies to get his new friend’s approval—and he ends up back where he started, stuck on earth.
At last, in the most poignant moment of the film, Elio and Olga learn to grieve together.
Grief is inherently isolating. Others may have experienced a big move or a bad breakup, but their circumstances (not to mention their brain chemistry) can never be identical to yours. Even another friend or relative mourning the same person’s death had a different relationship with the departed person.
Yet while grief is always particular and individual, as Christians, we are also called to weep with those who weep (Rom. 12:15). Sometimes, in spite of the incongruities of our losses, we need others to listen, to sit with us, to share their own stories. That’s what Elio needs from Olga.
Specifically, Elio narrates grief from the perspective of a child, one of the “least of these” (Matt. 25:40) without the words or context to communicate complicated emotions. It’s only when Olga admits her grief that Elio can share his own. Her vulnerability gives him the space to know he can be vulnerable too—and maybe stay earth-side.
Grief isn’t a problem to be solved—not by homemade bread, not by good movies. Long walks and favorite music might be welcome distractions, bringing temporary comfort or control. But our ultimate comfort is Christ, the one who knows exactly each of our particularities and circumstances, the one who can fully empathize with us. As Christ cried out on the cross (Matt. 27:46), we too cry out that the cup of sorrow may pass from us.
Although Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, is the only one who can understand the entirety of our grief, we can find comfort and solace as we see his face in those around us, the people who offer their presence and reassurance. Elio is an example of this solidarity—of learning to weep with those who weep so that ultimately and eventually we can rejoice with those who rejoice.
Mia Staub is editorial project manager at Christianity Today.
