Inside Out, as a film from the esteemed Pixar Studios, comes from a long line of family movies that take on serious topics and convey them in a way children can understand, without talking down to their audience. In this case, the film focuses on Mental Health, portraying the struggles of a young girl, Riley, battling depression during a tough time in her life, by personifying her emotions and creating a separate reality out of her mind.
The primary way the film portrays mental health is through the interaction of the two connected filmic realities, Riley’s Mind, and the Outside World. Whether the mind is diegetic is questionable - outside of some rare moments played entirely for comedy, the main purpose of it on a thematic level is to provide an extended metaphor for the mental health of a child, to give some sort of basis and understanding as to why Riley behaves in some ways that may seem irrational to someone else, as is common with people suffering from mental illness.
The Film’s Mise-en-scène highlights the contrast, with the Mental reality having high-contrast colours across a wide spectrum, while the real world has a much more muted palette. However, as the tone of the film gets darker, the mental reality also begins to mute the colours, while the muted colours of the real world are emphasized more heavily through shadows in dramatic scenes.
This is also portrayed through the movement speed of the characters, as the Emotions begin significantly quicker and more dynamic than the human characters, but slow down as the reality of depression begins to set in. As bright colours and fast movements are common to the animation of films made with Children in mind, especially to convey happiness, the reduction of these as depression sets in for Riley helps to convey her mental state in a visual way. Even those too young to truly understand depression are able to understand the idea of joy being sucked away, unable to even be felt, as is happening to her and conveyed by these visuals.
The editing style of the movie rarely cuts outside of to shift between the two realities of the film, or as a time-saving measure, however, the shifts between the dual realities create a fascinating sense of action based in cause-and-effect out of minor conflicts. As Corrigan and White note, "Jumps in distance and time are combined with changes in film stock within a supposedly continuous scene. The viewer notices how the action is depicted, instead of simply taking in the action", and Inside Out uses this editing technique in a similar way. There’s also a lack of camera movement when not absolutely necessary, so the background is often left static while the characters act. This forces the audience to pay attention to the actions and mood of the characters, with the background, no matter how pretty, merely framing them in vital scenes.
Despite the beauty of the surreal mindscape, the focus, outside of comedic moments, is on the Emotions, who, as themselves defined by a single trait for much of the film, are heavily exaggerated. Because of this drawn focus through minimal editing, the audience is captivated by them despite the technicolour background, so the changes in character through development of the Emotions as they begin to develop more complexity and become less one-dimensional, symbolising emotional maturity and represented through changes not just in attitude but also in animation and movement, such as Joy’s slower movement pace even after the conflict is resolved, are more pronounced to the viewer, especially child viewers, which allows them to still grasp the concept and story and learn from the messages it portrays without being distracted by the flashiness of the dream world. The main purpose of the movie is to be a story about mental health and emotional maturity, conveyed in a form that younger audiences can understand and learn from, so this is important.
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