My Life at the Movies 6.2.09: 2008 - WALL-E
Posted by DC Perry on 06.02.2009
We'll see the shows at Delmonico's
And we'll close the town in a whirl
And we won't come until we've kissed a girl!
2008 was a heavy hitter. The summer blockbusters didn't sacrifice substance or style – both Iron Man and The Dark Knight were fine films in their own right, with just the right amount of things that go boom. Doubt explored the destructive power of intolerance and cruelty while maintaining the ambiguity of the source material. Synecdoche, New York is another powerful work by Charlie Kaufman, though it buckles somewhat under the weight of its own hopelessness. Slumdog Millionaire is a sweet love story that manages to make us uncomfortable in all the ways good art does.
But the best movie of the year shows us all the bleak, self-destructive hopelessness of human nature, then pokes a hole just big enough for a plant to grow.
2008 at a Glance
US President: George W. Bush
Median annual salary: $57,000
Gallon of gas: $3.21
Dozen eggs: $1.66
New house: $256,600
New car: $31,300
Movie ticket: $9.50
Boston Red Sox: 95-67, second place, American League East
Me: This.
Not every movie can pull of a nearly dialog-free opening 30 minutes. WALL-E not only pulls it off, but manages to set the mood of an overused and discarded Earth, introduce us to our trash-compacting, pack-ratting, sentimental protagonist and his trigger-happy, woman on a mission foil, drop in some exposition about the whereabouts of the absent humans, and tell a heartwarming love story.
Humanity overloaded Earth with trash some time in the early 22nd century. The solution was to load everyone onto luxury space yachts for a few years and leave a flock of trash-compacting robots behind to clean up the mess. Naturally, none of this went to plan, and hundreds of years later, WALL-E (Ben Burtt) is the only robot left, dutifully compressing and stacking mountains of trash, snagging little trophies that strike his fancy to decorate his home that he shares with his pet cockroach. He especially adores Hello, Dolly, humming tunes from it and imitating the dance numbers as best he can.
And then one day, WALL-E's pleasantly dull life is turned upside down by EVE (Elissa Knight), a highly-advanced probe sent by the human fleet to scan for signs of life who shoots at anything that moves. Of course, WALL-E is head over treads in love. But he faces the most universal of problems – how to approach a heavily-armed woman and stay alive long enough to show her your junk collection and sing "It Only Takes a Moment" to her. Fortunately for WALL-E, EVE finds his pet cockroach indestructible and adorable, and he is able to make the necessary introductions.
While EVE is less impressed than WALL-E hoped at his Rubik's Cubes and light bulbs, when he shows her the plant he found sealed inside a refrigerator, she lights up like a Christmas tree. Her programming takes over and she collects the sample, locks down, and signals the ship, leaving WALL-E with nothing of his newfound love but an egg with a blinking green plant on its surface. Still, he takes her on dates and watches over her motionless shell until the ship arrives to collect her. Of course, WALL-E hitches a ride.
Onboard the Axiom, humanity has grown accustomed to the low gravity and abundant luxuries of space yacht life. They hover around in chairs and receive constant entertainment, food, and pampering from the ship's assortment of robots. They are both unable and unwilling to walk or otherwise take care of themselves, especially Captain McCrea (Jeff Garlin), who has handed over the controls to the ship's autopilot, AUTO. EVE reports to the bridge with her cargo, and Captain McCrea learns that the ship is designed to automatically jump back to Earth when it receives evidence that plant life can grow there again. When EVE is opened, however, the plant is gone. She is sent to the repair ward, since she's giving off a false positive.
WALL-E is sent along for a good cleaning. He "rescues" EVE, along with a whole army of defective robots, and EVE is fed up with him and tries to send him back to Earth. Their timing couldn't be better, since they spot one of AUTO's assistants putting the plant in an escape pod and jettisoning it. WALL-E makes his action hero move and escapes the pod with the plant before it explodes, much to EVE's delight. Together, they take the plant back to the bridge.
EVE and Captain McCrea both have epiphanies while watching her onboard recordings from Earth. He sees the state of the planet and realizes it's far worse than he was led to believe. EVE sees the way WALL-E cared for her while she was waiting to be collected, and realizes she reciprocates his feelings. AUTO, meanwhile, realizes he's a mustache-twirling villain, programmed from day one never to allow humans to return to Earth, since the outlook for the planet was never as optimistic as reported. McCrea is resolved to return to Earth, but AUTO is having none of it, dropping WALL-E and EVE down a garbage chute and locking McCrea in his quarters.
EVE and WALL-E barely escape the trash compactors, and despite WALL-E's severe damage, he insists that EVE take the plant and initiate the jump back to Earth. EVE, who has now fallen head over laser cannon in love with WALL-E, would rather repair him and let it all burn. He convinces her to carry out her directive and repair him later, and together with the horde of rogue robots, they make their way to the holo-detector that McCrea has activated despite AUTO's evil schemes. AUTO does everything he can to impede EVE and WALL-E, including tilting the ship, creating a landslide of obesity and destructive hover chairs, and clamping down the receptacle for the plant directly on WALL-E's head, damaging him even further, but leaving enough of a gap for EVE to drop the plant inside.
Back on Earth, EVE flies for WALL-E's home and his collection of spare parts. She rebuilds him perfectly – a little too perfectly, since he reverts to trash-compactor mode, meeting EVE's eyes with nothing but a blank stare. In an echo of their meeting, she shows him various items from his collection; he crushes them. She shows him "Hello, Dolly." He leaves. She holds his hand. He stares. She kisses him. He doesn't move. But when she turns to go, he doesn't let go. And slowly, his fingers interlock with hers. As he recognizes her and they hug as only stubby-armed robots can, the humans wobble and squint onto the surface of their new home, making plans for a garden of pizza trees.
Hell, if this movie had just been the end credits, set to Peter Gabriel's "Down to Earth," I may still have picked it as the best of the year.
WALL-E's power comes from its willingness to acknowledge our damning flaws. We are lazy. We are pessimistic. We destroy much more than we create. We build things to do our work for us, and we rely way to much on those things. And it settles into that notion for a good long while. It doesn't let us get away from it. The cities of trash littering the planet while one diligent little machine hopelessly attempts to clean it up on our behalf is about as bleak as it gets. But that little robot appreciates the things we leave behind, and we can't help but find it endearing and to look at those things from his point of view. He doesn't resent us for leaving a wasteland behind. He is fascinated by our singing, our dancing, our silly little hats and our interlacing fingers. WALL-E – both the character and the movie – has that sense of wonder that we – both the individual and the collective – have outgrown. He sees the tiny flicker of good in the mountain of bad, just like he sees the tiny little plant in the sealed metal box.
I can't think of a more optimistic note on which to end this column.
Yep. This is the end. I can't really justify doing a column for 2009. Since the year isn't over yet, it's not fair to choose a "best" movie from an incomplete field. Plus, I'd just pick Star Trek.
