A Beautiful Film, An Ugly World

[May Contain Spoilers]

On July 4th, after returning rather burned out from a long conference in California, I enjoyed a calm day of sleeping until noon, and seeing “Wall-E.” Little did I know how un-American that decision truly was...

“Wall-E” is a movie about a lonely and in love robot that’s also really curious and adorable. He follows the girlbot he loves into outer space, meets some devolving humans, and helps bring humankind back to Earth, which had been barren of any organic life for 700 or so years. This story, combined with the wonderful score, amazing animation, and lack of dialogue (ok, and the fact that “Wall-E” is so freakin adorable) made it a unique movie going experience. After the movie, I shared with Pauly (of 822 fame) my feelings of the movie, to which he replied, “It’s a really beautiful film.” For the first time, I could really tell the difference between a great movie and a beautiful film.

Not that it’s a surprise, but this plot was grabbed on by both sides of the political aisle and analyzed and then over-analyzed. As The Village Voice’s “Runnin’ Scared” reports, there is a large backlash against the movie coming from the right-wing, claiming, “‘The plot was something only Al Gore could love,’ wrote Say Anything. ‘And your average soy latte-sipping, Obama-voting, Che-flat-waving liberal.’” Of course, also according to “Runnin’ Scared*,” there wasn’t only hatred from that side, but a love: “Crunchy Conservative Rod Dreher said Wall-E ‘argues that rampant consumerism, technopoly and the exaltation of comfort is causing us to weaken our souls and bodies, and sell out our birthright of political freedom.’” Inject your politics as you will I suppose.

I’m not naïve enough to think that there would be no political backlash, but I’m certainly not happy about it. After the movie, Erin (also of 822 fame) said, “well, if that was the one movie that Earth beamed out and the aliens saw, it would make humans look terrible.” True. But it wouldn’t make conservatives or liberals look terrible—just humans—a group that conservatives and liberals alike cannot deny being a part of.

At this point in 2008, there’s a thick black line separating the right from the left, so there’s no surprise to see politics injected where it doesn’t belong. Kyle Smith, a columnist for the New York Post and self-proclaimed film critic had a negative review of the movie. Responses to his review ranged from agreement about the movie’s pacing (“what a yawnarama”) to the political (“Is this movie as blatantly liberal as ‘Happy Feat?’) to of course the backlash (“I’m quite ashamed with your review of ‘Wall-E’”). The biggest political issue seems to be with the environmentalist “message” of the movie, but thankfully Kyle tries to push that to the curb: “Well, I loved ‘Happy Feet,’ but if anything ‘Wall-E’ is even more of an environmental parable. (Not that I concede that to want a clean environment is a liberal idea. I hope we all want that)."

I may disagree with Smith’s review of the movie, but I think his sentiment about the environment is accurate. Hate the movie for it’s lack of dialogue, but leave the politics (or the politics you inject) out of it.

*This is a link to a different “Runnin’ Scared” post, so please click both.