Wall-E is about as ambitious a project I’ve seen from a major animation studio in recent memory. Animation isn’t cheap, and Wall-E’s published $185 million budget (plus the exorbitant marketing costs) mean that Pixar needs a lot of ticket sales to turn a profit on this effort. Because of this, the temptation in animation is to play as broadly as possible, pandering to a young humor with a few references for the parents to appreciate.
Instead, Wall-E gives us... silence. Well, not silence so much as just the absence of dialogue. About 45 minutes worth of no dialogue. That means that they gamble on the power of the robot to engage the audience, to bring us into the story, to make us understand what’s happening and why, and to make us root for the hero without saying a thing for the first half of the film. As far as mainstream summer fare goes, that’s pretty ambitious.
Fortunately, it works. Wall-E is a janitor robot (actually a Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class). Left behind on a junked up world, his job is to keep things clean. It’s obviously been a long while since he’s seen anyone, and somewhere along the line he’s developed something of a personality. Despite the seeming inanity of his existence, Wall-E is fascinated by the world around him, searching among the junk for items of wonder that he can add to his collection. He has a collection of old romantic movies, and finds pleasure in the old dance numbers. The film takes its time drawing us into this charmer’s little world, who has somehow find a way to experience joy and pleasure even in his lonely existence.
But then one day Wall-E’s world changes. A new robot lands on earth. As he marvels at EVE, following her around and trying to strike up a friendship (and avoid being blown up by her), we’re slowly introduced to her mission. EVE is on a search for life, looking for evidence that earth, long abandoned by humans, is now ready for their return. She finds evidence of life, and sets off to return to the humans to report on her success.
Wall-E tags along, and so we are introduced to the rest of reality. In abandoning the planet, humans have settled into the ultimate leisurely existence, having lived for generations on a kind of space cruise ship. Few can walk anymore, as they have given themselves over to an entirely lethargic existence. All have long since given up on any hope of returning to earth, and they now seem at ease in this new existence.
As the adventure heightens, Wall-E devotes himself to EVE, showing a determination that slowly wins her over. Meanwhile, some humans slowly wake to the opportunity that EVE has discovered, and find themselves fighting to return to earth, facing opposition that rises at every turn.
The film has an interesting parabolic quality, with this lurking warning lingering about creation care and the cost of earthly neglect. But more interesting is the experience of humans who have learned to disengage from reality because of their obsession with gadgets. Of course, I’m watching the film as some lunkhead nearby tries to blind the rest of the audience with the light of their cell phone, checking their text messages throughout the film. It’s a connection they would probably miss.
On the one hand, we get Wall-E, who experiences wonder and joy at creation (even the gadgets), and finds his experience of the things in his life bringing out greater delight, even drawing him more to other people (well, other robots, in the form of EVE). On the other hand, we have the humans, who enjoy every convenience and comfort, but struggle to find anything joyful in their existence.
It was this beat of the film that was most engaging for me, and most interesting. As a self-confessed gadget guy, I own the warning the film offers, that I want my fascination with the stuff of life to bring out my sense of wonder, not quench it. I think our sense of wonder is a divine gift, and is meant to draw us to divine things. The pleasure that we can experience here is meant to draw us to the source of ultimate pleasure. Wall-E is a grand celebration of the gift of wonder, a gift that we can easily lose in a culture of entertainment and excess. If the message of Wall-E is to engage life grandly and discover the wonders within, then I celebrate with them.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Wanted: A Review
There are times in movies when the desire to wrestle with interesting ideas must compete with the (often deeper) desire to look cool. Wanted is just such a film. For the first two acts, it seems to be doing little more than combining the work of two better films. By the end, it actually wrestles with something in a unique way, and almost has a great finish.
First, it’s tribute to other films. In the opening sequences, we are introduced to Wesley Gibson (played by the consistently impressive James McAvoy). Wesley is a mid-level accountant in a faceless corporation. He hates his boss, an oppressive petty woman, and hates his job. He hates his girlfriend, who is sleeping with his best friend (he hates him too). In all, this life that he hates has left him a muted man, going through the motions knowing that the next day promises nothing better than what today has given. His life has become a celebration of banality.
This is ground that Fight Club explored better than about any film, and in these moments I was struck by how little the reflection on these issues has really changed in ten years. The sense that modern life is an emasculating force in our lives is still very present, and this observation seems as timely now as Fight Club did then.
But Wanted doesn’t stop there, and moves from Fight Club to The Matrix. The film’s opening moments (at times directly quoting The Matrix), get explained as we learn that Wesley’s father, who abandoned him when he was young, is part of a secret society of assassins, who have operated for over 1000 years. His father, and Wesley, have a gift in the form of an ability that few possess, an ability that enables them to be skilled assassins. This organization calls Wesley to take his father’s place, to train so that he can accept his first mission: hunt down his father’s killer.
This hero’s call, laced with a framework from Joseph Cambell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, will look familiar to viewers of The Matrix, Star Wars, and other fantasy narratives. There’s very little new here, except for some cool special effects and fun action. For a large portion of the film, it doesn’t appear as if Wanted is going to do anything more either. And that wouldn’t be that bad. After all, they were fun movies, and if we don’t get much more out of a summer action flick than a reminder of better films, I doubt many will complain.
But the film suddenly becomes much more interesting as the group reveals how they choose their targets. The organization discovered in the early years a secret contained in the weaving of fabric, that small blemishes could be read and interpreted to name the targets for assassination. Thus, they live to serve “Fate,” which uses them to reorder reality around its mysterious purposes.
As Wesley learns his skills and carries out his assassinations, he slowly learns to embrace his place, though not without some skepticism. How do you assassinate someone who hasn’t done anything yet, only because Fate has determined that they will do greater harm in the future? This doubt reaches its pinnacle when, after a number of critical plot points I won’t reveal here, Wesley and other members are faced with a difficult choice. Do they follow their orders and trust Fate, or do they trust in their own choice as better than the mysteries of fate?
Fate vs. free will. Now we’re talking! Of course, discussions around fatalism and free will are nothing new to film. But what is interesting for Wanted is that the choice they seem to make is that trusting to Fate is a better, even a more freeing choice than exercising an unrestricted free will. While the question they pose is nothing new to film, the answer they arrive at is somewhat novel.
Having said that, it’s worth noting how different their dichotomy of fatalism and free will is from robust Christian theology. As much as large swaths of the Christian world today embrace the language of free will as indisputable theology, I don’t think most of them mean what they mean in a film like this, nor should a notion of Fate as seen here be familiar to Christians who live in a theistic universe. Their understanding of Fate is locked in mystery, whose purposes are always kept fully secret, and who gives nothing but orders for followers to obey. Such is not the God of the Bible. His otherness means mystery abounds, but His revelation speaks to a moral order to the universe, who calls people into action but drives home again and again the motivation for doing so. We trust not to an impersonal Fate, but to a personal Father.
Similarly, regardless of debates and diversity within Christian tradition, popular notions of free will should prove unfamiliar to us. After all, we don’t live an unbound existence, but instead spend our lives in tension between two types of bonded existence: bonded to sin, or bonded to Christ. One of the key BIblical revelations is that a life bonded to Christ is the true life of freedom.
As I said, the film winds up touching on profoundly interesting ideas, and almost makes a good point. But in the end, the need to be cool wins out, and what we’re left with is a kind of “theology light.” Still, Wanted offers a pretty interesting journey with a unique detour that certainly offers a unique point of view for popular film, and that alone makes it worth the journey.
First, it’s tribute to other films. In the opening sequences, we are introduced to Wesley Gibson (played by the consistently impressive James McAvoy). Wesley is a mid-level accountant in a faceless corporation. He hates his boss, an oppressive petty woman, and hates his job. He hates his girlfriend, who is sleeping with his best friend (he hates him too). In all, this life that he hates has left him a muted man, going through the motions knowing that the next day promises nothing better than what today has given. His life has become a celebration of banality.
This is ground that Fight Club explored better than about any film, and in these moments I was struck by how little the reflection on these issues has really changed in ten years. The sense that modern life is an emasculating force in our lives is still very present, and this observation seems as timely now as Fight Club did then.
But Wanted doesn’t stop there, and moves from Fight Club to The Matrix. The film’s opening moments (at times directly quoting The Matrix), get explained as we learn that Wesley’s father, who abandoned him when he was young, is part of a secret society of assassins, who have operated for over 1000 years. His father, and Wesley, have a gift in the form of an ability that few possess, an ability that enables them to be skilled assassins. This organization calls Wesley to take his father’s place, to train so that he can accept his first mission: hunt down his father’s killer.
This hero’s call, laced with a framework from Joseph Cambell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, will look familiar to viewers of The Matrix, Star Wars, and other fantasy narratives. There’s very little new here, except for some cool special effects and fun action. For a large portion of the film, it doesn’t appear as if Wanted is going to do anything more either. And that wouldn’t be that bad. After all, they were fun movies, and if we don’t get much more out of a summer action flick than a reminder of better films, I doubt many will complain.
But the film suddenly becomes much more interesting as the group reveals how they choose their targets. The organization discovered in the early years a secret contained in the weaving of fabric, that small blemishes could be read and interpreted to name the targets for assassination. Thus, they live to serve “Fate,” which uses them to reorder reality around its mysterious purposes.
As Wesley learns his skills and carries out his assassinations, he slowly learns to embrace his place, though not without some skepticism. How do you assassinate someone who hasn’t done anything yet, only because Fate has determined that they will do greater harm in the future? This doubt reaches its pinnacle when, after a number of critical plot points I won’t reveal here, Wesley and other members are faced with a difficult choice. Do they follow their orders and trust Fate, or do they trust in their own choice as better than the mysteries of fate?
Fate vs. free will. Now we’re talking! Of course, discussions around fatalism and free will are nothing new to film. But what is interesting for Wanted is that the choice they seem to make is that trusting to Fate is a better, even a more freeing choice than exercising an unrestricted free will. While the question they pose is nothing new to film, the answer they arrive at is somewhat novel.
Having said that, it’s worth noting how different their dichotomy of fatalism and free will is from robust Christian theology. As much as large swaths of the Christian world today embrace the language of free will as indisputable theology, I don’t think most of them mean what they mean in a film like this, nor should a notion of Fate as seen here be familiar to Christians who live in a theistic universe. Their understanding of Fate is locked in mystery, whose purposes are always kept fully secret, and who gives nothing but orders for followers to obey. Such is not the God of the Bible. His otherness means mystery abounds, but His revelation speaks to a moral order to the universe, who calls people into action but drives home again and again the motivation for doing so. We trust not to an impersonal Fate, but to a personal Father.
Similarly, regardless of debates and diversity within Christian tradition, popular notions of free will should prove unfamiliar to us. After all, we don’t live an unbound existence, but instead spend our lives in tension between two types of bonded existence: bonded to sin, or bonded to Christ. One of the key BIblical revelations is that a life bonded to Christ is the true life of freedom.
As I said, the film winds up touching on profoundly interesting ideas, and almost makes a good point. But in the end, the need to be cool wins out, and what we’re left with is a kind of “theology light.” Still, Wanted offers a pretty interesting journey with a unique detour that certainly offers a unique point of view for popular film, and that alone makes it worth the journey.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)