The oil-painting-style animation at the end, an extra point for that. (Still from Wall-E, 2008)
The oil-painting-style animation at the end, an extra point for that. (Still from Wall-E, 2008)

Pixar and Disney joining forces really has produced no shortage of great work – toys that talk and move, a charming little clownfish, a superhero who just wants a normal life… every one of them is a masterpiece worth talking about. A friend recommended WALL-E (2008) to me last summer, but it sat unwatched for a long time before I finally downloaded it. Having now seen it, it really is a fine piece of work – mountains of trash piled high on Earth, ships drifting through space… every scene rendered vividly and richly, and even the OST is top-notch! The little plan to rebuild Earth at the end of the film was warm and moving too.

What I admire most in the film is the love between the two robots. Wall-E, the garbage-cleaning robot, and Eve, the probe robot, simply fall in love – no gender, no race, no time, a love that crosses the universe, truly earth-shattering. Someone might say, well, those are just two machines off an assembly line, just a combination of parts – but then again, aren’t humans just a combination of water and protein, products of the very same kind of manufacturing process? Of course, thinking this way might be oversimplifying the question, or it might be overcomplicating it.

Ah, never mind – watch an animated film (a fairy tale) and let it cleanse your spirit a little, wash away some of your fixed assumptions, and feel something fresh, like morning dew! Still, it’s nice to see the model of love has made some progress – no longer just a prince and princess. That, I find most reassuring.