Chattanooga Pulse

Written by Helene Houses
Wednesday, 09 July 2008 18:07
WALL-E is, yes, a masterpiece

For someone who will blissfully sit through the most out-there theatre in the world, I am a plebian when it comes to film. I hate David Lynch films (except for The Elephant Man and The Straight Story; I have one word for David Cronenberg films (bletch); and admittedly I have seen far more animated films than most small children
But that’s exactly why I’m qualified to tell you that Disney/Pixar’s WALL-E is in fact the masterpiece it’s being touted as. Though it can be happily enjoyed by the smallest viewers for its amazing Pixar visuals alone, older kids and adults will appreciate the bigger meanings, references and yes, messages.
By now, you’ve probably heard that the title character is a little, very lowly robot, possibly the only one left on a completely trash-covered Earth, which humans have abandoned for 700 years. He wanders about trying to fulfill his original “directive” (to compact trash), accompanied only by his friend/pet, a cockroach. He has filled his “house” with collections of things, including rubber ducks, kitchen utensils and light bulbs, and is forever charmed by replays of certain songs from the movie of Hello, Dolly!

Somewhere in the depths of all the sludge remains the memory of what is really precious.

Then a giant spaceship arrives, depositing a fetching (if lethal) iMac-esque heroine, EVE.
I’m not going to go on about the rest of the plot, as it will be much more fun if you see it for yourselves. What I loved about WALL-E is its combination of silent-film comedy (the movie is worth it for the sequences with the Microbe Obliterator robot alone) and old-fashioned message of hope.
Yes, the world has been buried in garbage by a combination of crazed consumerism (egged on by Wal-Mart-like Buy N Large) and clueless CEO/politicians who urge constituents to “stay the course,” and cockroaches and Twinkies have indeed inherited the Earth (the combination of the two is at the same time hilarious and yucky), but somewhere in the depths of all the sludge remains the memory of what is really precious.
Director Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo) is said to have had the idea for WALL-E years ago, but shelved it because he was unsure about doing a love story with robots. But WALL-E and EVE’s story is as timeless as the Little Tramp and the Flower Girl in City Lights. Beyond this, what he’s really done is created a love story about humans and the enduring power of natural life.
Right now, as the California wildfires burn, the Zen monastery at Tassajara, where I have spent some of the most idyllic moments of my life, is being threatened. The residents at the end of the Tassajara road, who voluntarily stay to fight the fire, went out to see WALL-E over the weekend and came back to blog about how it had lifted their spirits.
Go on-go see it. Take a child along if it makes you feel more secure. You’ll have lots to talk about afterwards.