Oh Boy, what a movie week. If Dark Knight is so far the best movie I saw in 2008, Pixar’s Wall-E is probably not far behind.
I was kind of disappointed by Cars two years ago, and by Ratatouille last year. In their defense motors and food are certainly less appealing to me than topics like super heroes or science-fiction.
Science-fiction: that’s precisely what Wall-E is about, in a very pure way. Like many of the best SF stories, Wall-E takes place in a more or less near future but is obviously talking about our present society by firstly pointing its deliberate ecological suicide (sounds a bit like Shyalmalan’s The Happening) . The movie starts with amazing and beautiful shots on what one could think are skyscrapers, but are in fact massive but ordered piles of garbage. In the first part of the movie, years of human history are summed up, but without a word being spoken. The Pixar crew subtly uses advertising posters and the city’s signposting to explain to us how the human race fled Earth in spaceships after being overwhelmed by garbage. These first silent minutes are a jewel.
Later Wall-E encounters the remains of a space-drifting humanity. Once again the film cleverly mirrors our society: people are enslaved by machines, computers and automation to a point that makes them almost inhuman.
Of course the visual experience of Wall-E matches its clever content. Animation, character design and textures are as always exceptionally beautiful, which one can’t be surprised by knowing these guys.
More than its hilarious gags, its amusing references to 2001: a space odyssey or its cute robotic love story, I’ll remember Wall-E for its SF relevancy, that should hopefully give birth to a new generation of 4 year-old SF Geeks.
