Finding Dory: The Undertow of Memory, the Destiny of Disability

“What’s wrong with his fin? He looks funny.” “He was born with it. We call it his lucky fin.” That exchange from 2003’s Finding Nemo resonates for any parent of a child living with a disability. Now 13 years later, Pixar’s Finding Dory takes an even deeper dive into the community of those who may have to overcome a perceived shortcoming, giving us a wide variety of characters who all seem to have an atypical course in life.

In a flashback, we begin with two such parents, Jenny and Charlie (Diane Keaton and Eugene Levy), coaching their young fish offspring Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) on what to say to others if she gets lost – that she “suffers from short-term memory loss.” “Suffers” may not be the most fortunate term, but Dory’s being taught to explain that she’s a little different, and that she needs help. It’s a simple little scene, but the kind of thing we almost never see offered up as a family dynamic in modern film. Because Dory is different. And where her instant amnesia was played more for laughs in the original, in Dory, directors Andrew Stanton and Angus MacLane deal with Dory’s disability in a much more impactful and poignant way. In a world where life is made up of connections and memories, where are we left when those tethers unravel? Plot-wise, present-day Dory suddenly has long-forgotten memories of her parents resurface – and her quest to find them, to reconnect, drives the plot.

A quest that leads her to the Marine Life Institute, a possible point of origin, where she encounters new characters who all have to compensate for something. Ed O’Neill as Hank, an irascible octopus, pretty much steals the movie. Hank’s really a “septopus,” missing a tentacle, who’s fleeing trauma, and dreams of shutting himself away from the world, living in a private box, where he can be safe. Hank becomes Dory’s reluctant navigator and co-conspirator, and he’s a fantastic animated character, who comes and goes through the institute at will, thanks to his amazing ability to camouflage. There’s Destiny, a whale shark who keeps bumping into walls thanks to her poor vision. Captivity is just too confining. Ty Burrell is Bailey, a beluga whale who’s convinced his echolocation doesn’t work. Everyone's just a little bit broken.

All these characters have limitations, and have found themselves “rescued” away to the nurturing safety of the institute’s aquarium until they can be rehabilitated, if not released. The institute’s good-intentioned protective quarantine echoes the dentist who once nabbed Nemo: “I found that guy struggling for life out on the reef and I saved him!” Dory, Hank, Destiny and the rest are at sea individually – to a degree that’s emotionally painful at times. Anyone who’s watched a loved one struggle with dementia or Alzheimer’s will feel the hard tug of hopelessness as Dory fights to rekindle fleeting memories against the pull of anxiety’s undertow.

But make no mistake (as the box office is proving resoundingly), Finding Dory is a whale of a comedy. I can attest that children love this movie, and maybe one of the reasons it’s resonating so well with audiences is that in addition to some uproarious, chaotic comic execution, it’s about the bond of family, and the vivid notion that it’s not only okay to be different, it may actually be a strength. It may make you a better person. Its strongest themes are of overcoming adversity by banding together with your loved ones, and that happenstance can often be the real luck that helps someone make a family or find what they feared was lost. Someone on the Pixar team clearly has a keen insight into families who experience disability, and they’ve managed to deliver an incredibly uplifting and beneficial story about diversity, while still being wildly entertaining. Make sure you stay for the very, very end of the end credits. Very highly recommended.