Pixar continues its unbelievable winning-streak with Wall-E, a film that is the studio's most daring, audacious project yet and one of the most flat-out entertaining films I have seen in quite some time.
The plot is simple: Humans have fled the earth, due to filth and contamination. Wall-E, or, the last remaining Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth-Class on Earth, bides his time by compressing the mountains of remaining garbage into neat cubes, while collecting the more valuable trinkets he comes across in a little museum he maintains outside of the city. This process is thrown out-of-whack by Eve, a sentry-robot sent to Earth to study its filthy environment and see if the planet is fertile to support life.
The most remarkable aspect of Wall-E is the near-complete absence of dialogue from the film. The Wall-E character has no dialogue, and neither does Eve. All Pixar uses to advance the characters and plot is sound effects, actions, and subtle facial expressions from the robots. In fact, excluding the insertion of human characters two-thirds the way into the film, that's all there is. Beeps, groans, and physical comedy, yet that's the genius of Pixar'we can still empathize with these rusty old machines like human characters, even if they haven't spoken a single word of dialogue!
The animation, as expected, is flawless, but not perfect. Like the grimy, fuzzy visuals that Finding Nemo utilized for its water environments, Wall-E displays a dusty, garbage-infested earth, one piled sky high with trash and prone to violent sand storms. And the Wall-E character itself shows the same kind of detail, and the aged, slightly rusted exterior of his metal is juxtaposed by the shiny, sleek visual of the Eve design.
One final note on the animation: Pixar continues to have the most sophisticated lighting seen in animated films today. The same gorgeous characteristics that struck me in Ratatouille continue in Wall-E, specifically in the scenes involving the museum of trash Wall-E lives in, where the source of lighting comes from strewn Christmas lights. The shot of the museum as the lights flicker on is among the prettiest images I've seen in a movie this year.
Just as Pixar is a studio of artists, it is also a haven of historians, like a Smithsonian of film history. Each Pixar film draws upon a wide range of films for inspiration, and Wall-E is no exception, using as its muse classic silent films from the golden era of Hollywood (Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Tati, etc.). This is more than self-conscious cleverness, though. The Wall-E character IS Chaplin's tramp. Dirty, mangy, yet with a heart like gold and an unquenchable spirit that holds universal appeal. Also, it is no coincidence that Wall-E, like the tramp, never speaks.
Pixar's Chaplin-influence also extends to the filmmaking. Never one to overwhelm his audience with technological gimmickry, Chaplin shot his films in two styles--far away for comedy, and close up for tragedy. Far away angles would perfectly capture the tramp's zany, unpredictable physical comedy, and close up would record every nuance and emotion of the film's tragic conclusion. Wall-E follows this like an honors student, watching Wall-E's escapades with careful, far away detachment and letting the chaos develop into sublime comedy, while allowing the intimate scenes between Wall-E and Eve mature in close, compassionate quarters. Brilliance!
' Peter Ricci
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Peter Ricci
