Wall-E
Written/directed by Andrew Stanton
Wall-E may be the best example thus far of what the Pixar machine can produce. The first 40 minutes: silent exploration of our vividly imagined future world by a tiny trash compactor are utterly brilliant and incredible. Through Wall-E's binoculars, we see a savaged earth, the result of humans' overconsumption and gross negligence. Humans have exhausted earth's resources and then catapulted themselves into space on a 700- year space cruise. Meanwhile Wall-E has been left to compress the pieces of a wasteful civilization (along with a cochroach and an endless supply of twinkies--the two things that can survive Armageddon as we learned in fifth grade).
Yet, in spite of its dystopic themes, Wall-E is not without hope. While year 2700 humans are now obese babies who slide around on space style Laz-E boys, suckling cupcake sodas and mindless television (sound painfully familiar?), they are not without conscious. But it requires the heart of a robot (or the heart chamber harboring a budding seedlet) to remind them of the world they have discarded.
There was something magical about this film. Yes, it was sort of simple and prescriptive, maybe a little dull for its target audience (the heavy-handed environmental undertones certainly aren't without cause, but hard for the hannah montana and younger set). But fundamentally it was universal love story which took common objects and made them spectacular and otherworldly through stunning animation. I see this as in line with the goal of any great art work, which is why I recommend this film in tandem with the new Buckminster Fuller show at the Whitney Museum (a genius and scholar of sustainability and eco-consciousness, not just those funny domes), as well as the Olafur Eliason public art tour de force, the NYC Waterfalls (now cascading water along the East River). Both artists strive to create beauty through environmental responsiveness.
I also loved the scene with the spork. Classic.
No comments:
Post a Comment