Review of “WALL-E”
It is several hundred years into our future, and man has left for the safety of the stars, having polluted the Earth beyond recognition. It seems, however, that the last man out forgot to turn off the lights – for one sole droid continues labouring away at cleaning up the mess we left behind. WALL-E, an acronym for Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth class, has spent so long among the detritus of humankind he has developed a kind of sentience, as well as some very human characteristics. He works his way through mountains of rubbish, compacting it and building enormous ziggurats from the pressed cubes of waste – but along the way, he souvenirs pieces that interest him – bubble wrap, a Rubik’s cube – he hums along to the tune of the Hello Dolly score, and he aches with loneliness.
Into his life comes EVE, the robotic equivalent of Angelina Jolie – a sleek, modern little number who packs a punch and is out to save the planet – her mission is to search for signs of life returning to Earth. When WALL-E inadvertently finds it for her, she returns to the Earth mother ship to let them know the planet is safe for re-habitation, and WALL-E chases her across the galaxy.
Disney-Pixar have been marketing this film forever – the trailer has been attached to films for over a year now – but they did a good job of it because what looked dire on first viewing a year ago has grown on me like asbestos, and I found myself looking forward to this release. Knowing that WALL-E’s writer/director Andrew Stanton was responsible for Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc and Toy Story 2, one might expect something special, but WALL-E surpasses expectations. I feel like the thesaurus is going to run out of synonyms for wonderful for me to use. WALL-E himself owes a debt to Chaplin’s tramp – the filmmakers do terrific things with physical comedy in the absence of dialogue – and there is no dialogue for the film’s first 40 minutes. If poetry is about conveying the maximum amount of expression with the greatest economy of language, as my undergraduate poetry lecturer once said, then Wall-E is Blake, is Dickinson. It is the top, it is the Colosseum. And while this is essentially a story about finding someone who touches your heart, it also packs a powerful message about the society we live in – just wait til you see what the filmmakers have done with our future selves.
The animation is faultless, and the story, the dialogue (when there), and the background visuals are layered enough to pay off continually on repeated viewings.
CK
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