The Earth has turned a rusty, reddish-brown color. Next to the dilapidated skyscrapers, new ones have risen – huge houses made of cubes. These cubes are compressed garbage, collected by the cleaning robot WALL-E, who, for some reason, was forgotten to be turned off and now works eternally – repairing himself and refueling from solar panels. There are no people on the planet: they polluted it and flew into space on a giant spaceship. History is silent on how many people fit into the ship, but it’s clearly less than six billion. However, there are no corpses in the frame, and we’re thankful for that.
WALL-E leads the life of a perfect bachelor. He collects all sorts of junk left behind by humans, some dolls that would do honor to any Timur Bekmambetov film. In his hangar, there’s a perfectly structured bachelor mess with moving shelves. His life is pleasant and measured: work, home, hobby, and a pet – a cheerful cockroach of the kind that will survive even a nuclear catastrophe.
The Arrival of EVE
And then, a woman appears in his life.
Well, we think it’s a woman: neat, beautiful as an egg, just as white. Moreover, armed to the, ahem, shell, and devoted to duty.
And he loves her. And she is faithful to her duty, but then she loves him too.
He flies after her to that very giant spaceship because she is a scout and must bring a green sprout there – proof that life on Earth has reappeared and humanity can return there.
Why You Should Watch WALL-E
Take my word for it: you need to go to this film in formation, immediately, dropping everything. And it’s not even because it’s “Pixar,” and you can find characters from other cartoons of this company there, play “Easter eggs” and quotes. And not because the characters are wildly cute, the adventurous plot is quite fascinating, the jokes are funny, and the film is generally tightly knit, as befits a love-adventure action movie.
It’s simply a very serious, real movie. About love and self-sacrifice. About not abandoning your own. About loyalty to duty. About how only the mad are normal. About how people always remain people and are capable of heroism – even if they have turned into spherical pig-like idiots, zombified by advertising and free vitamin-enriched cocktails.
The Truth in WALL-E
The most amazing thing about this film is its truthfulness. And it’s not just that some things, as always happens in Pixar cartoons, are fabulous and conditional, while others, on the contrary, are photorealistic. And it’s not even about the rather small episode in which the bachelor robot tries to introduce the female robot into his hangar, and she is frightened of everything and does not understand that this mess and hell is a structured, perfect order.
The first metaphor of the cartoon, with skyscrapers made of waste, is not a metaphor at all. If you don’t believe it, take a look, even from afar (they won’t let you get close), at any of the numerous Moscow region “solid household waste landfills.”
It seems it’s time for us to build a spaceship.