WALL*E is every brilliant woman’s dream!
Wall*E has many morals, values and messages for all ages as well as subliminal metaphors. These are the highlights of the movie:
1) For the first 20 minutes, the movie viewer is captivated WITHOUT dialogue. No verbal communication… keeping one wondering whether words are a distraction throughout life and symbols are more powerful, meaningful, less destructive and arbitrary. The creative sounds, visual splendor and movements of the film keep us captivated unaware that dialogue is absent from the piece. Genius!
2) The story begins with the spanning of some part of the Big Blue Marble that has become brown from the consuming mentality that destroyed all life on earth. Human disconnect ingrained by the Cartesian- Newtonian mindset that the body is separate from the mind, that the universe works like clockwork and this mechanistic view, over the generations, separated person from nature and the connection to the natural. The lesson: Man became his own God with his own creations (including attempting cloning of life itself) disassociating from the All-That-Is. Man the creator built more THINGS outside of himself, objectifying his reality, separating from it more and more with each new technology. Man the Creator used ‘things’ as a crutch instead of finding the Divine within himself. This is the end result of that thinking. Perhaps such a thing happened on Mars that once held lush water and life. Perhaps time repeats itself and mammalian life is a parasitic attachment to land forms destroying all in its path. Can humanity learn from its past mistakes and save the planet or will it destroy yet another draining it of its resources- land, air, water, plant- to be arid and unlivable, moving onto space for the next planet to destroy?
3) The trash is everywhere, yet a robotic figure finds that “one man’s trash is another’s treasure” as he finds meaning in a hubcap, bra, boot. Our male hero, WALL*E (Waste Access Land Leveler Earth) is quirky, clumsy, resourceful, accident prone, gentle (as he regretted flattening a cockroach), an incurable romantic, committed, loyal, mannerly, helpful, intelligent, inquisitive, with stamina, perseverance, disheveled looking, practical, task oriented, square shaped with edges (or edginess), jagged, childlike, altruistic, explorer, adventurer, self-sufficient (recharges his own battery solar cell), clunky, selfless, male of few words but many actions
4) Cudos to the creator. Here is the unique aspect of the movie…portrayal of a powerful woman. The hero meets a heroine, EVE (Earth Vegitation Evidence) who is white (good), sleek, beautiful, fresh, new, powerful (carries a weapon, can annililate at one stroke), flies, never touches the earth but can be a part of it, technologically savvy, more intelligent than the male counterpart, highly verbal, purposeful, egg shaped (like womb), smooth, beautiful.
5) Wall*E goes about his days programmed to clean up the trash of earth by compacting it and building towers. He is capable of many skills including mechanic to his own frame. He seems to have genuine care for his mate, the cockroach, and is concerned for its welfare (feeds it, cares for its safety and security). He is inquisitive about the many pieces of trash around him and tinkers with various objects in his path discarding some while saving others that appear novel. He is also capable of some communicative sounds although language is not part of his programming, he tapes his favorite songs from the movie My Fair Lady.
6) His inquiring nature takes him far from home to follow ‘the light’ red at that, that moves about the ground but ends up to be from above; the perfect metaphor for those who follow along their daily lives but never look up or smell the roses. The surprise is a spacecraft, which lands with such force that his industrious nature digs him a hole for survival.
7) Out comes a creature that awe inspires him, Eve. She moves at the speed of light above the ground with grace and elegance in contrast to his clunky nature of treads on the ground. She is searching for something and travels far and wide to find it.
8) Wall*E follows along risking death from her powerful side arm. Is it his inquisitive mind or heart or soul that keeps him fixated? Ah, the laws of attraction?
9) The cockroach makes the first introductions, escaping death from her seeming violent nature as well. Wall*E follows suit but not until he runs the gauntlet of her assaults. Is this the metaphor for the dance of dating?
10) He is then permitted to follow her in clear view. He is clumsy at his pursuit, falling, knocking over large pipes (after an attempt at making her something which unimpresses her), being flogged by shopping carts as she flees from the scene shaking her head in disgust (a remarkable subtle gesture on the part of the creator).
11) Finally, the introduction while both take in the view of a magnificent bonfire she started out of her anger at being confine by a magnet on a large ship. Clumsily, they exchange names, attempt to pronounce them and learn about HIS ‘directive’ (hers is classified). During the course of the exchange, he begins his male protective instincts and attempts to warn her about an upcoming dust storm. He leads her to safety. Our hearts are warmed by his selflessness, compassion, caring, loving, gentle nature and disregard his clumsiness.
12) In his abode, she explores his immense museum of items collected over 700 years. Her first response is to destroy anything misunderstood or moving, as she has been programmed, but he implores her otherwise. As she grasps one item after another with childlike curiosity, her great power becomes a problem. She must learn to manage it so as not to be so destructive. She destroys objects just by playing with them. And yet, she introduces Wall*E to fire he has had lying dormant in his abode in the form of a lighter. She ‘lights his fire’ or ‘shows him the light’ for the second time.
13) While watching his favorite film, he begins to dance and implores her to do the same (again, the dance of life is reenacted). Unfortunately, her power nearly destroys the dwelling and then sends our hero across the room to the ceiling. He demonstrates his resourcefulness by fixing his broken parts. We are charmed as she laughs at his clumsiness.
14) In a moment, the mood changes as Wall*E introduces Eve to the plant he found while scavenging. Subliminal to Eve’s consciousness, this was her mission, finding sources of life on the planet. Her response is to protect the plant life and shut down (much like women who become pregnant) while her heart becomes activated with new life inside of her. Is it a coincidence that Eve is shaped like an egg and the life form is kept in her belly as her heart glows?
15) Wall*E like most men, cannot comprehend what has happened to make her completely shutting down (much like women who become pregnant) in protective mode. He tries everything to bring her back from taking her outside (thinking she needed to be recharged as he does by the sun), moonlight escapades on a gondola, watching the sunset, does nothing to bring her out of her shell.
16) Finally, the day he goes back to his job to leave her basking in the sun, the ship arrives to remove her from the earth. And Wall*E our patient, compassionate, loyal male, runs to be by her side (much like men do whose wives are pregnant). His adventuresome spirit never bypasses his compassion and self-service as he is, in the middle of a crisis, concerned for the safety of his friend the cockroach.
17) Now, everyone secured, he attempts to save Eve from her seeming demise and latches onto the spacecraft for a ride. As we look back, we see the brown, dead earth in the distance and the clutter of trash even in space, as the journey to the unknown begins.
18) Cleverly, the creator makes sure that Wall*E has moments in the movie where he recharges his battery (so as not to run out of energy at any given point). This time, he passes directly across the sun’s path. Perhaps the most notable portion of the trip is his ability to ‘touch the stars’ in the sky.
19) As the ship enters the belly of yet another craft, it reminds one of the journey of pregnancy or giving birth. There is a cleansing process by MO and his cohorts as the contamination from earth’s surface is cleaned away. Eve is readied for her journey of giving birth to new life.
20) Wall*E although he does not understand the process or her condition, still manages to stay loyal and follow her wherever she may go into the bowels of the ship. There, many more new adventures await and Wall*E is always game.
21) Unlike earth, there is much activity here with various types of robots and then, humans! Humans who are very, very overweight and unable to stand on their own two feet after hundreds of years in space and its effects on the body. (The only question unexplored by the creator is how people are being feed, albeit only liquids, for 700 years out in space).
22) Eve’s heart is pulsating green with signs of life in her. She is taken to the ‘leader’ or captain where she awaits her fate. But the birth of life on earth would mean the end of life in space threatening the preprogrammed robots that have been ordered never to return. To transform a program or behavior takes an enormous amount of effort, focus and perseverance, which the captain musters up along the way.
23) Yet, when Eve is presented to the captain with her heart containing life, it is absent from her innards. Her first response, like most women, is to blame Wall*E for taking it. She is banished as unfit, shut down so as not to retaliate and sent for renovation as Wall*E is also sent to be cleaned and manicured in a subterainian cellar.
24) While there, Wall*E misinterprets her tests as attack on her person, breaks out of his ‘box’ and strikes her would be attackers. His accident-prone nature dislodges her weapon and frees the other misfits in the area. Wall*E is hailed as a hero by the misfits while Eve follows the crowd out of the containment area.
25) This act of defiance brands Wall*E, Eve and the other misfits as ROGUE and the bounty hunters ensue only to be outsmarted by the group. In the middle of the chaos, Eve uses her selfless instincts and intellect to attempt to send Wall*E back to earth to protect him. He refuses to leave without her and in the middle of their debate, the plant resurfaces. Wall*E attempts to retrieve it only to find himself shot out in space alone. While hitting every knob and dial, he manages to self-destruct the pod carrying him away as Eve chases after him (women). He remembers the fire extinguisher that nearly anniliated him on earth and retrieves it out the door of the pod and uses it to propel himself in space (with a few minor overshots along the way).
26) In a moment of crisis, Eve and Wall*E have an electrical (loving) connection and find a moment of PLAY as they fly through the air…dancing the dance of life. Foreplay? Eve has now retrieved the plant and they attempt once again to take it to the captain…by herself this time although Wall*E attempts yet again another gesture to woo her in the middle of it all. She’s all business. Men, always trying romance at the wrong times.
27) At ‘the top’ she is greeted by the captain, who knows to give the plant water after viewing videos from earth, and the ‘navigator wheel’ steals it back, programmed not to return to earth ever again. The struggle between seeming good and evil, logic and illogical, programming and instinct begins and eventually the captain overpowers, by will and intellect, the navigator and starts the ship back to earth. The Wheel of Life is metaphor as the navigator in this movie as something to understand, overtake and change the course of life.
28) Meanwhile, our hero is trying to protect his ladies mission by inserting himself in the line of danger to return the ship to earth while Eve is protecting the rest of life on the ship. Two protective, selfless souls doing their part to save the world and each other. What a mission!
29) Eventually, we return to earth at warp spend and rebuild it from the very plant Eve and Wall*E protected as their mission. Earth is restored, our hero and heroine save the day and each other, as Eve returns Wall*E to earth and finds the parts needed to bring him back to life after his mishaps in space of being crushed and electrocuted by the wheel. All of the misfit robots also survive as their place in history has also been secured through their brave actions.
30) There is no finer love story, story of morality and values in an animated feature than this.
With great admiration;
Dr. Daria M Brezinski