Who knew that a Pixar film about a sentient trash compactor sent to clean up Earth after a mass evacuation would be so indebted to Charlie Chaplin? Indeed, the lovable robot WALL•E owes a great deal to Chaplin’s tramp character, not only in his mannerisms, but in his desire to win over an unrequited love and the blunders that come along with it.
However, it isn’t just Chaplin that WALL•E riffs on. There are elements of Jacques Tati’s Playtime (a director equally indebted to the work of Chaplin) as seen in the film’s portrayal of a society dependent on ridiculous gadgets to carryout every day activities for them. And, of course, another obvious parralell is 2001: A Space Odyssey, which has become a sort of standard for parody in light-hearted space adventures. And let’s not forget, where there’s Chaplin, there’s also Keaton and some of the chase sequences in WALL•E have the same flair for the fortuitous accidents that made Keaton’s pursuits so uproarious.
I say all this not to haphazardly throw around film references, but to illustrate just how smart a film WALL•E happens to be. Like all Pixar films, it plays to both sides of the audience. The children present will respond to the adorable cast of robots and the easy-to-understand plot. The adults will pick up on the not-so-subtle social satire that finds the future of humanity obese and unable to walk or do things for themselves other than lounge about on floating chairs and talk on futuristic phones. To toss out a few more references, the overbearing consumer culture is remeniscent of the overlooked Idiocracy and the rampant obesity echoes another fabulous animated film from 2003, The Triplets of Belleville, in which every American character resembled the Michelin Man.
The best scenes are also the boldest and they come early in the film when WALL•E is alone on Earth tending to the endless business of cleaning up trash. A near total absence of dialogue along with a lack of conflict give the story an eerie, ascetic structure that establishes it as Pixar’s darkest and most experimental film yet. Part of me wanted these to extend forever, but knowing full well that this a commericial commodity aiming to appeal to a broad audience, I understood that it would have to come to an end. To the immense credit of Pixar and director Andrew Stanton, they manage to sustain the brooding, lonely tone for as long as possible, but ultimately it is shattered abruptly with the arrival of a second robot, Eve, for whom WALL•E falls head over heals (or treads). From here, the film takes a turn toward Chaplin-esque territory with WALL•E repeatedly attempting to woo the new arrival.
The visuals are simply stunning, and Pixar flexes its artisitc muscle yet again with another superbly realized world. If I have to fault the film slightly, the plot gets a little cluttered toward the end, and the portrayal of humanity in all their obese grandeur gets slightly heavy-handed, but these are minor qualms in relation to the film’s overall success. While it may not be as superb as Finding Nemo, WALL•E easily ranks among the best work the Pixar studio has released, and deserves a place among the best films of the year so far.
Tags: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Animation, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Tati, Pixar, Robot Romance, Robots, Triplets of Belleville, WALL•E
