REEL REFLECTIONS

WALL*E: A FABLE OF HUMAN EXTIONTION
A Review

David Greiser

Summer is the season of blockbuster movies, generally long on style and short on substance. And any film managing to combine both elements fairly screams to be seen and discussed.

This morning I find myself at my keyboard, in that time of year when I generally avoid the theater in favor of home rentals. I’m pounding out a review for a new film I cannot stop thinking about.

"WALL*E" is the sort of film I would normally miss, no matter what time of year it might be released. In my search for "important" and "serious" films to see and review for DreamSeeker Magazine, I don’t usually bother with animated movies. Clearly I’m going to have to get over both my snobbery and this major cinematic blind spot. "WALL*E" is a film that delivers a hard-edged message in a charming and slapstick package. It is a story that older children and adults alike will want to see, and should see.

Directed by Andrew Stanton ("Ratatouille" and "Finding Nemo"), and animated by the animation geeks at Pixar, "WALL*E" paints a world 700 years in the future. Earth has become environmentally uninhabitable, and all the humans have been packed off to giant space labs where they live sedentary, low-gravity lives on comfy hover-chairs, surrounded by conveniences that have allowed them to grow fat and lazy.

The lone being left on earth is WALL*E. WALL*E is a solar powered robot left on earth to clean up the trash. And trash is all that appears to be left on the planet.

The opening scene displays a city of skyscrapers wreathed in brown clouds. Closer inspection reveals that each of the "buildings" is actually a pile of artfully compacted trash. Day after day, WALL*E picks up trash and stores it in neat, cubed piles. Night after night he wheels his lonely way to a storage area, where he closes his video-camera eyes and goes into sleep mode.

One day, WALL*E’s isolation is shattered by the discovery of a tiny, green plant—the only known example of biological life on earth. At about the same time, a sleek object resembling a spaceship descends from the sky, whisking WALL*E and his tiny treasure off to the space lab Axiom.

Onboard this ship, WALL*E discovers love with a sleek, specimen-gathering robot named Eva. How does WALL*E know about love? One of his few personal possessions back on earth happens to be an old VHS cassette tape of songs and scenes from "Hello, Dolly." The love story is a nice little sub-plot that asks a sci-fi question that’s been a perennial since "Frankenstein": Can love exist in the non-human world?

The remainder of the film involves a conflict between the ship’s captain and his computer assistants over the question of whether the discovery of the plant means that humans may now be allowed to return to earth to begin re-greening its environment. So as not to inject plot spoilers for those who want to see the film, I’ll end the plot summary before revealing more. Suffice it to say that the story successfully addresses its somber ecological subtext with a wit that combines verbal humor with sight gags and slapstick.

"WALL*E" employs the stunning visuals and sounds that viewers have come to expect from Pixar films. There is virtually no dialogue in the first 40 minutes—the message is carried completely by visuals and noises. The space station home of humans is a perfect playground of gadgets and conveniences painted in bright, attractive colors. Meanwhile, everything left on ravaged earth appears in drab browns and grays.

WALL*E, the hard working robot, is scuffed and rusty around the edges, yet his camera-eyes are soft and expressive. Eva, his robot love, looks sleek and shapely in ways that must only be appealing to male robots. There may well be an Academy Award in cinematography in the offing for this film.

The movie carries two sledgehammer messages softened only slightly by its comedic tone. The first is that people are on the verge of completely destroying their beautiful planet. The second is that technology and materialism are making us all childish and stupid. It is surely no accident that the human beings in the film look like babies, all rounded bellies and tiny limbs and feet, dependent entirely on machines for their existence. Consumer capitalism, the message seems to be, infantilizes all of us.

Watching "WALL*E" was a conflicting experience. Is it a kids’ movie? Science fiction? A fable? A cautionary tale? In fact, I think it is all the above. See it—and take the kids.

—Dave Greiser teaches pastoral ministry at Hesston College in Kansas, where he depends on machines to write film reviews, teach classes, exercise, and do pretty much everything except sleep.