Movie No. 11: WALL-E

(Note: Sorry this took so long to get done. I actually postponed it to give me time to see a different movie first. You'll see later.)

Few filmmakers just capture the pure magic of storytelling as well as Pixar does. That's one of the best ways to describe their new film, "WALL-E" simply pure movie-making magic. Seriously, see this movie.

Our hero WALL-E, short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class, is the last working robot on earth, or at least Manhattan. Humans have long since abandoned earth after toxic levels of garbage overran the city, and WALL-E's fellow robots, essentially full-service trash compactors left behind to clean up the planet, have long-since stopped working. But WALL-E has persevered, going back out every day to compact mounds of trash. Perhaps WALL-E has survived because he has found a reason to. Over the years, WALL-E has developed a personality, mainly a sense of curiosity and wonder. Every day, he saves certain treasures from the trash he compacts, bringing them back to his home.

For all of the treasures WALL-E has found, however, something is missing. Along with curiosity, the robot, whose only friend is a seemingly indestructible cockroach, also has developed a sense of loneliness, a longing for some kind of connection.

Then one day, a spaceship lands on earth carrying EVE, a robot with a specific mission and an itchy trigger finger. Finally, WALL-E hopes, here is the connection he has been longing for.

Much has justifiably been written about the movie's first segment on earth, which is absolutely breathtaking. The vistas are both strangely beautiful and haunting, a barren wasteland of trash. Perhaps better still, however, was the character work. Without more than just a couple of words, this section creates an utterly heart-breaking character in WALL-E. Both his curiosity and his near desperation are so vividly and wonderfully drawn that this robot seems more human than the people in many movies.

While the second half on a spaceship which now houses the human race is not quite as flawless as the first, but there is still a lot of brilliant stuff to be drawn from its rather dystopian view of the future. People have ceded so much of their lives over things and technology that they have lost those very human traits that the robot WALL-E seems to have developed. There's no curiosity, no wonder or awe. People have let technology take care of their every whim, and because of that they've kind of become a slave to it.

On thing that strikes me looking back on the last two Pixar films is how they seem to be digging back into the early days of movies for inspiration. One of the reasons why this review is late is that I wanted to wait until I'd finished seeing my first silent film, "City Lights," which has been cited by some as a possible inspiration for this film. I can see it. But several of the more choreographed comedic sequences reminded me of Pixar's previous outing. Many of the kitchen scenes in "Ratatouille" took on the same balletic quality as many of the scenes in Chaplin's film. It might be neither here nor there, but it is interesting how a company on the cutting edge of technology seems to be turning to the past for storytelling tips.

As some of you who have been reading the various incarnations of my movie lists for a while might recall, two out of the last three Pixar films cracked the top 10 for their respective years. I'd be surprised if it didn't happen once again this year.

In one word: "Whoa!"

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