All Aboard!

In 1985, Russian filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky made an American thriller called Runaway Train, starring Jon Voight, Eric Roberts, and Rebecca De Mornay. Set in Alaska, it tells the story of two escaped prisoners who board a locomotive only to find it unmanned and out of control. The obvious comparison would be the movie Speed (1994), but instead of an unstoppable bus in L.A., we have a train rushing at over 80 mph through arctic environments. Konchalovsky had previously co-written the Andrei Tarkovsky classics, Ivan's Childhood (1962) and Andrei Rublev (1969), and went on to direct pictures like Tango & Cash (1989) and The Odyssey (1997). Based on a screenplay by Akira Kurosawa, Runaway Train sits somewhere in the middle in terms of quality; not as sublime as the former films, nor as poor as the latter.

Jon Voight and Eric Roberts both received Oscar nominations for their work, and Voight actually won the Golden Globe for Best Actor. Unfortunately, there are patches of weak acting elsewhere in the film, the dialogue is a mixed bag, there are too many coincidences (the engineer has a heart attack, brakes “fail”, doors “jam”), and the plot features the timeless “evil prison warden” cliché. In fact, Warden Ranken (John P. Ryan) is involved in the most laughably over-the-top scene in the movie, when he attacks a poor dispatcher in the restroom. However, when Runaway Train works, it works quite nicely. The train sequences are well crafted and exciting, the snowy, mountainous landscape provides a terrific setting, and the main characters are intriguing.

It was the overall feeling of suspense, along with several powerful images of the doomed machine gliding through the white wilderness, that really stuck with me over the years. Those were the first things I recalled as I watched Transsiberian, the new film by Brad Anderson (director of Next Stop Wonderland and The Machinist). Like Konchalovky's film, Anderson's has a train, a wintry backdrop, and plenty of thrills. Still, despite the similarities, Transsiberian is a unique experience that stands on its own. It deserves to be seen, and were it not for some terrible creative choices in the last half hour, it may have been great.


The movie is about a married American couple, Roy (Woody Harrelson) and Jessie (Emily Mortimer), who have been doing humanitarian work in Beijing, China on behalf of the Christian church. With their good deeds complete, they decide to depart on the Transsiberian Express for a six day journey to Moscow, intended to satisfy both Roy's love of trains and Jessie's fondness for adventure. They end up sharing a compartment with another young couple, Carlos (Eduardo Noriega) and Abby (Kate Mara), who claim to have been teaching in Japan. During a routine stop, the two women walk about discussing their lives, while the men wander off to examine some old locomotives. Once the trip gets underway again, there is no evidence of Roy having ever gotten back on board. This is where the mystery elements begin creeping in...

It should surprise no one that passenger trains have always been fine settings for mystery stories. After all, there are a limited number of suspects, and clues are confined to a relatively small space. Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Sidney Lumet's so-so adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1974), are two prime examples of this concept brought to life on-screen. The mystery in Hitchcock's film begins with a disappearing woman, and in Lumet's, a murder. The focus of both pictures is in reaching a solution to the mystery itself, but Transsiberian takes another route entirely.

Roy and Jessie may be married, but they are polar opposites. He is the religious one, the one who wants children; he's a “good guy” type, if a bit naive. Jessie, on the other hand, has a bad girl past, isn't particularly anxious to have kids, and though she loves Roy, she seems to desire a brief escape from the safety of their relationship. She hungers for something more dangerous and exciting. After Roy's disappearance, Anderson takes this idea and runs with it. Instead of making a whodunit, where every character would direct their efforts toward solving the mystery of the lost man, he has them assume Roy is fine. They figure he was so wrapped up in the old engines that he simply lost the time, and Carlos and Abby decide to wait for him at the next station with Jessie.

Though Carlos represents everything Jessie doesn't need, that is precisely what appeals to her, no matter how much she tries to deny it. While Roy is out of the picture, the sexual tension between them grows with each passing moment. Though Jessie has no intention of being unfaithful to her husband, she continues to put herself in situations where such a betrayal would be easy to consummate. This forbidden attraction eventually takes a chilling turn, adding another layer of suspense to the proceedings.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned, Transsiberian takes an ill-advised turn late in the game. For about an hour and twenty minutes it is one of those rare, intelligent thrillers with solid characters we grow to care about. In the last half hour though, the movie slips into familiar, hackneyed territory complete with chases, illogical decisions, and yes, even a timely train collision. I would still recommend it, but the climax does diminish the experience.

To be fair, The Lady Vanishes ends with a shootout that also seems to come out of left field, but in Hitchcock's film, it works. It may be unexpected, but at least it is enjoyable and makes sense. Hitch managed to concoct a delectable dish of great characters, mystery, and humor. It is still the definitive mystery train film, far surpassing the 1979 remake (on a side note, there is a 1989 Jim Jarmusch picture actually called Mystery Train, but it has little to do with what the title implies).

In conclusion, those on the lookout for a compelling new thriller with fine performances, shouldn't pass up Transsiberian. Its strengths outweigh its flaws, much like Runaway Train's do (these films would make for great back-to-back viewing). It isn't quite on the level of Hitchcock, but he would have certainly admired the attempt.

An Epic Among Epics

As I watched the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony the other night in high definition, one word kept creeping into my mind, and that word was “epic”. With a price tag of around $300 million, vastly topping the previous opening ceremony record of $30 million in Athens four years ago, the Chinese got exactly what they wanted. It was a jaw-dropping, awe inspiring spectacle that certainly left most people nodding in agreement with Bob Costas' “retire the trophy” remark. Best of all, the ceremony was directed by Zhang Yimou, the talented filmmaker behind Raise the Red Lantern (1991), To Live (1994), Hero (2002), and many other fine pictures. Yimou's best films have a more intimately profound effect and pack a greater emotional wallop, but for purely grandiose scale he won't ever match this.

The theme of the ceremony was tied into Chinese history, which got me thinking about historical epics of the motion picture variety. Films like Intolerance (1916), Napoleon (1927), Gone With the Wind (1939), Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960), El Cid (1961), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Ran (1985), Braveheart (1995), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), and many more. There has never been a shortage of handsome, elaborately designed mega-productions in cinema history. Yet, how many epic films have enjoyed the nearly unlimited financial backing of a government, like Yimou's opening ceremony did? The most epic of all epic films, Sergei Bondarchuk's War and Peace, had exactly that.

Based on Russian author Leo Tolstoy's classic masterpiece, often considered the finest novel ever written, the Soviet government was eager to create a definitive screen version that would absolutely obliterate Hollywood's 1956 attempt. As an added bonus, the Cold War was in full swing at the time, and the Soviets were hungry for any opportunity to one-up the United States. As others have stated, it looks like War and Peace sat right alongside the space program on the list of Soviet priorities in the 1960's. Their goal, in a nutshell, was to create the greatest screen spectacle of all time. Without question, they succeeded.

Shot in 70mm, with a gargantuan budget of over $100 million, War and Peace is easily the most costly film ever made. Today, the very same film would be over $700 million to produce, with some estimates running as high as $1 billion. By comparison, Cleopatra (1963), the second most expensive film in history, cost less than half of that (about $315 million adjusted for inflation). However, unlike some big budget extravaganzas, you truly see every dime of that money up on the screen in Bondarchuk's film. From the elaborate costumes and opulent sets, to the soaring crane shots and the 120,000 Red Army soldiers employed for the battle scenes; this is nothing short of a cinematic behemoth. The four major setpieces, namely the Battle of Austerlitz, Natasha's first ball, the Battle of Borodino, and the burning of Moscow, are truly stunning.

War and Peace runs nearly seven hours, and required seven years to make (two of them in pre-production). It was released in four parts between 1965 and 1967 in the Soviet Union, and went on to defeat strong competition like Milos Forman's The Fireman's Ball and Francois Truffaut's Stolen Kisses in winning the Best Foreign Film Academy Award in 1969. As immense as the picture is, Bondarchuk never loses sight of the characters or storyline, which is why War and Peace can be labeled a great motion picture, not just a great epic.

For the uninitiated, War and Peace successfully tackles just about every possible element of the human condition. It is primarily about a group of aristocratic families in early 19th century Russia, and the way their lives change over a nine year period. It is a time of many questions and few answers, as Naploeon's Grand Army poses a serious threat to the nation as a whole. Though there are many wonderful characters, three emerge as the principals. Pierre Bezukhov, the good natured illegitimate son of a wealthy Count, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, the unhappy cynic who leaves to battle the French, and the young and lively Natasha Rostova. As the years pass, these characters weave in and out of each other's lives, powerless to control most of the circumstances forcing them to action. By the end, each of these characters has aged physically, but more importantly, they have grown as human beings.

Of course, the wonderful casting plays no small role in the success of the film. Vyacheslav Tikhonov and Bondarchuk himself are both terrific leading men, playing Prince Andrei and Pierre, respectively. However, the most difficult role to cast had to be that of Natasha, since Audrey Hepburn had knocked the ball out of the park less than ten years prior in King Vidor's version. Bondarchuk chose Lyudmila Savelyeva, a ballerina in her early twenties, and the choice proved to be an inspired one. Savelyeva effortlessly captures the innocence and wide-eyed romanticism of Natasha, but as the character matures throughout the story, the actress remains up to the task. A little scene where she dances to folk music in a hunting lodge nearly steals the show.

While plenty of film adaptations actually do improve upon their source material (The Godfather, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Psycho, Jaws, etc.), the same can not be said for War and Peace. Even a seven hour film can not cram in every little detail and nuance of one of the greatest novels in history, especially one well over a thousand pages long. On the other hand, I would argue that the novel can not measure up to the magnificence of actually seeing some of these incredible events play out. I concede the novel is superior overall, but this story, in each medium, nicely compliments the other.

At any rate, Bondarchuk's War and Peace is clearly the best film version out of the seven or so that have been made. The 1972 BBC miniseries, starring Anthony Hopkins, remains the most faithful to the text of the novel, thanks to a generous fifteen hour running time, but fails to adequately capture the spirit of the novel. This is a distinctly Russian story about the Russian people, it isn't about British actors walking around in drawing rooms. The BBC version, for all its strengths (including a fine script by Jack Pulman of I, Claudius fame), lacks a cinematic feel, and ultimately comes across as more of a recorded stage play. Additionally, Morag Hood was a bit too old to be believable as the thirteen year old Natasha, and several performances suffer from overacting. By contrast, Bondarchuk's version brings the novel to life in purely cinematic terms, with a talented Russian crew, genuine historical locations, and a deep understanding of Tolstoy's prose.

War and Peace opens a door to a world that will never be seen again. I refer not to the way all historical epics open doors to long lost times and places, but rather to the vast canvas of this film in particular. Never again will there be a picture on the scale of War and Peace, as such a task would be prohibitively expensive for any studio or combination of studios under the sun. In terms of sheer size, the battle scenes will never be equaled without the aid of computer animation, and no animation can compete with the real thing. Peter Jackson and Weta Digital supplied some entertaining battles in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but swarms of artificial men brought to life with a few keystrokes simply can not awe us in the same way. Nor can they portray the emotion of war as effectively.

Taking up over an hour of the movie is The Battle of Borodino, a phenomenal achievement to gawk over, but Bondarchuk makes certain we never forget the messy, horrific side of the conflict. It's not all pageantry and chest pounding; there is a toll paid in human life, and here that toll includes some of the major characters. Many would argue that the Battle of Shrewsbury in Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight is the greatest battle scene in film history, or the rain drenched climax of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, or the Omaha Beach landing in Saving Private Ryan. Scenes from Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch and John Woo's Hong Kong films would get consideration, perhaps even something from Bondarchuk's own 1970 film, Waterloo. There are plenty of excellent battle sequences in the cinema, but a case could easily be made for Borodino's place at the top of the pack. Bondarchuk does not use rapid cutting, nor does he typically place the camera right in the middle of the action, with clanging swords and bodies falling. Instead, he orchestrates longer takes, with energetic cinematography, so we can better see the battle as it unfolds. The end result is rewarding, to say the least.

Despite all of this high praise, Bondarchuk's film isn't perfect. For the most part the editing and camerawork are brilliant, even innovative back in the 60's, but some of the attempts at stylish technique are a bit out of place and displeasing. I'm sure they seemed trendy at the time, but their “cool” factor has aged about as well as the mosquito attack in John Huston's The African Queen, or the homoerotic beach volleyball scene in Top Gun. In addition, the film relies too heavily on voice-over narration to fill in extra detail. Used in moderation, voice-over isn't necessarily a bad thing, but here it tends to come across as a clumsy, unimaginative device.

Nonetheless, War and Peace is a film that demands to be seen, preferably in a theater, or at least on a nice big screen somewhere. The phrase, "They don't make them like this anymore," has been overused for decades, but in the case of War and Peace it is genuinely true. Actually, they never did make them like this before War and Peace was released, and they still don't make them like this forty-one years later.

Below, I have provided a short video I threw together simply to give an idea of how epic War and Peace really is. That is all it is: an idea. This video doesn't even begin to show the full detail of these images. There are tons of things going on in the deepest reaches of these shots which can not be made out at all in this little video. The final shot may be the most epic single shot in film history, but it can barely be seen here. Please consider this as you watch. Also, there is a new restoration of this movie going on now, but if you are interested in a current DVD, get the five disc RUSCICO version. Do not get the Kultur version. It is cropped to a 4:3 aspect ratio and looks terrible. Be sure to click the "HQ" (high quality) button for this video.

A "Dark" Diamond in the Rough Emerges

Last year was, by modern standards, a pretty solid year for motion pictures. My pick for the best of them would be the Coen Bros.' No Country For Old Men, but I was also fond of There Will Be Blood, Away From Her, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Gone Baby Gone, The Counterfeiters, Into the Wild, Once, Persepolis, Michael Clayton, Rescue Dawn, Zodiac, Ratatouille, Juno, Enchanted, and several others. Unfortunately, 2008 has been a different story altogether.

Characters have once again taken a backseat to formulaic plots and unspectacular “spectacle”. High profile disappointments have flooded the big screen market; Cloverfield, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Incredible Hulk, The Happening, Hancock, and Journey to the Center of the Earth, just to name a few. Don't get me wrong, Iron Man was great fun and very well made, but it wouldn't have been near last year's Top 10. Quite frankly, up until about three weeks ago I thought HBO's fifth season of The Wire was going to finish out 2008 destroying everything at theaters.

That was when I saw WALL-E, the latest and arguably greatest film from Pixar (see the original post in this blog). Suddenly, the sun had risen again over the dreary cinematic landscape and things no longer looked quite so bleak. Reinvigorated, I took a look at Mongol and Hellboy II next. I appreciated the costumes and set decoration of Mongol, while the art direction and creature design in Hellboy II were simply stunning. Still, though both films were somewhat above average, it wasn't until July 20th that I became convinced WALL-E was no fluke. 2008 had more great films in store.

I was vacationing in San Antonio, TX at the time, taking in the Alamo, the Natural Bridge Caverns, the River Walk, and Sea World. Not another soul among my party professed interest in adding an IMAX theater, twenty-three miles from our hotel, to our busy itinerary (most of the show times were sold out anyway). Forced to take matters into my own hands, I ended up at a downtown San Antonio bus stop, with a homeless man, at 5:30 AM on Sunday morning. It was still pitch dark when I arrived at the Santikos Palladium theater about two minutes after the 6:15 start time, and it was so packed I had to sit in the third row.

Luckily, The Dark Knight is the kind of film that would have been good from any seat in the house. I found 2005's Batman Begins to be a solid superhero origin story that suffered from a weak third act, but with The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan tops his first effort with relative ease. I have enjoyed all of Nolan's films since Memento in 2000, and this may very well be his finest film to date. It is, without reservation, the best superhero movie I have ever seen.

Many have compared The Dark Knight to Michael Mann's 1995 film, Heat, and though Nolan has admitted the influence, they aren't much alike outside of the bank heist scenes and a similar exploration of the thin line between good and evil. Without a doubt, however, Nolan's film has more in common with great cinematic crime epics than with traditional comic book movies. In fact, those interested in a film for the whole family with a hero to cheer for, a villain to boo, a climactic showdown, and an upbeat ending, should stick with Iron Man. The Dark Knight is as “dark” as its name implies, and many may find it lacking in the kind of fun generally associated with superhero movies.

In addition, this entry in the franchise is even more grounded in reality than the last. There is not a single “super power” to be accounted for, it's all technology and psychological manipulation. The Gotham of Batman Begins, with that identifiable Metropolis/Blade Runner influence in the art direction, has been replaced by a Gotham that looks exactly like what it is: Chicago, Illinois. Bruce Wayne is more human this time around as well; he tires of spending his nights as a masked vigilante and regrets the negative side effects of Batman on Gotham's populace. He seeks a new hero (“a hero with a face”) to take his place.

Therein lies the plot of the film. The new District Attorney, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), is referred to as Gotham's “White Knight” due to his fierce determination in bringing down the mob and reducing crime. Though Bruce Wayne is originally abrasive toward him, as Dent is dating the woman he loves, Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal replacing Katie Holmes), he ultimately realizes that this is a man who could truly lead Gotham into a brighter future. Unfortunately, the mob is the least of Gotham's problems when a new chaotic figure appears in the form of the Joker (Heath Ledger).

To defeat his enemy in a non-lethal manner, as Batman's moral code demands, Bruce Wayne seeks to understand what is behind the Joker's actions. Michael Caine, returning as Alfred, Wayne's butler, has a great scene where he explains to Bruce that not every villain has a motive beyond “watching the world burn”. In his own sick, twisted way the Joker does have a motive, however. He seeks to prove that social order is an illusion, by bringing down the very figures that inspire hope among the people; namely Harvey Dent and Batman. He wants to destroy the foundation and watch the house fall. If the Joker has to die to get Batman to break his code, he still wins. That is the vile nature of what Batman, Dent, and all of Gotham are facing in The Dark Knight.

The film has such wonderful performances all around, it is almost a shame that all the credit seems to be going to Ledger. He is terrific, certainly, and in my view this performance was second only to his turn as Ennis Del Mar in Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain. His loss is extremely tragic; I considered him to be the finest of all 20-30 year old actors, long before he passed. However, I feel we should also acknowledge the superb job done here by Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, Christian Bale (whose Batman voice doesn't bother me), Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Needless to say, these actors all benefit from a terrific script penned by Christopher Nolan and his brother, Jonathan.

Though The Dark Knight has a few too many hokey one liners and tends to overstate its themes and message, neither issue takes away from its effectiveness. Furthermore, legitimate questions have been raised about scenes that leave the audience hanging. At one point, a large group of people in a penthouse are still in danger while Batman is in the street below, and Nolan simply cuts to the next day. In another example, the means of a certain “escape” aren't fully revealed (EDIT 8/04: On a subsequent viewing, I realized the Joker has a shard of glass, not a knife). Still, is it necessary that absolutely everything be spelled out for us? I would like to see how audiences that enjoy being spoon fed would react to, say, a Tarkovsky film. I can hear it now, “Why did that bird just land on the boy's head like that?!”

At 152 minutes, The Dark Knight is long, but never overstays its welcome. Several people have voiced the opinion that 30-40 minutes could have been shaved off the end and saved for the next film. I adamantly disagree. If the last forty minutes were cut, the film as a whole would lose all resonance. I dare say that the events which transpire in the final act of the The Dark Knight are the entire point of the film; the culmination of everything it had been building toward. At 112 minutes, we would have a lean, mean summer movie. At 152 minutes, we have the greatest superhero film ever made, and a film that may end up being the best of the year.

By the way, if you haven't seen this film in an IMAX theater, then you haven't seen it at all. Period. While other 35mm movies shown on IMAX screens have been converted to the format, The Dark Knight is the first major theatrical film to actually have footage (over twenty minutes worth) shot with 15-perforation/70mm IMAX cameras. The immense scale and clarity of these images is a mind-blowing revelation for film fanatics, like myself. The action sequences benefit not only from better choreography than those in Batman Begins, they are also show pieces to be awed over now, thanks to the IMAX format and Wally Pfister's cinematography. Even with today's sophisticated home theaters, The Dark Knight in IMAX proves a vast separation remains between private and public venues. When The Dark Knight comes to Blu-ray, no matter how amazing it looks, it won't measure up to the IMAX theater experience.

See The Dark Knight. See it in IMAX.

ADDITIONAL NOTE:
I saw the French film, Tell No One, yesterday afternoon. Talk about a movie with a “hook”. In the beginning, a pediatrician (Francois Cluzet) and his wife (Marie Josee-Croze) go skinny dipping at night in an isolated lake, and the wife wanders off alone following an argument. The husband hears a loud noise and chases after her, guided by the sound of her screams, but is knocked out by an unseen assailant. Then, eight years after his wife's murder by a serial killer, the husband reads a newspaper story about two bodies being unearthed near the lake where she died. The case is reopened, and he is now a suspect. Making things even stranger, the husband receives an email from his dead wife.

Based on the American novel by Harlan Coben, and released in France in November 2006, Tell No One is a satisfying mystery/thriller/romance; certainly a “must see” for U.S. viewers this year. Though it was pretty convoluted, it was never difficult to follow. Unfortunately, the middle aged couple sitting behind me during the show might disagree with that sentiment. At one point, when a character was mentioned by name, I overheard the man ask, “Who the hell is that?”, to which the wife responded, “Don't ask me...” At least six times over the course of the film I heard the wife say, “This is thoroughly confusing.”

The film is not confusing in the slightest, and all of the clues add up. Do the characters always make the brightest decisions? No. Are there some elements of the mystery, once explained, that don't quite hold up under scrutiny? Probably so. Does it feel more like an American film than a French film? Without a doubt. Still, the performances are good, the script is solid, and for two hours most viewers will be thoroughly engaged, trying to solve the puzzle. I had a good time.

WALL-E: The Return of Visual Storytelling

Here is my brief summation, as if I had written a full review and this was my closing sentence: WALL-E is a fantastic film, but it is not for everyone.

This became painfully obvious to me as I sat in the theater, personally enthralled by the Pixar magic up on the screen, but unable to escape the huffing, general restlessness, and constant blasts of cell phone light piercing the darkness to my immediate right. That was all my girlfriend's doing. Needless to say, she hated the movie. I'm not sure how everyone else in the theater felt, but thankfully laughter and general amusement seemed to continue up to the final credits. A goth-looking teen couple left about halfway through, never to return, but if anything I considered that an advertisement for the film's high quality.

I must admit, I need to see the film again without the perpetual distraction and discomfort caused by countless shrewd glances and a text message that read: “This is stupid.” Yes, more lovely moments courtesy of my girlfriend. Had WALL-E run thirty minutes longer, I may have ended up a permanent resident of the theater, at least until the cleaning crew came in and discovered my dead body.

So, why did my girlfriend not enjoy WALL-E? Her most telling reaction/explanation came about twenty-five minutes in. I looked over and saw her mouth the phrase, “Does anyone ever talk?!” I suppose I had failed to warn her that the film has very little dialogue, and indeed practically zero dialogue for the first thirty minutes or so. Little did she know that was the very reason I was excited to see it. WALL-E adheres to the old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Not always a true statement, I admit. Precious few “pictures” in an Ed Wood movie, for example, are worth any words at all. However, in the hands of the highly imaginative minds employed at Pixar, each image is filled with such intricate detail, one can only pity the writer who attempts to paint the same scene in sentences.

I admire films that fully exploit the unique strengths of this medium to tell their stories. Within the first ten minutes it is clear that, due to pollution in the future, the human race has abandoned Earth aboard a massive spaceship called the Axiom, leaving behind scores of robots to clean up the mess. WALL-E is one such robot. Much like an infant, WALL-E can not express himself through words, but he need not speak to be fully understood. We see that he is lonely, we know how badly he yearns for companionship, we realize the sun gives him life (he's solar powered), we understand that his sole intended function is to compress trash, day in and day out, long after the other models like him have gone quiet and still.

We get to see his personality as well, and machine or not, he certainly has one. After a long day of work, we see him return to the home he has made over the centuries (an old storage shed), where he removes his treads as if they were shoes, watches an old VHS copy of “Hello Dolly!” on a magnified iPod, and remains safe from the frequent storms brewing outside. Illuminated by Christmas lights, we see WALL-E's little collection of knick knacks, the various treasures he has saved in an Igloo Playmate ice chest while he's out doing what he was built to do. One nice gag has him discovering a diamond ring, then tossing it aside in favor of the box it was in, which intrigues him.


When WALL-E watches “Hello Dolly!”, he stares in wide-robot-eyed amazement as the two characters on-screen sing and stroll down the street. WALL-E looks longingly at their hands, the physical connection between them. We see a close-up of WALL-E's own “hands” as he tenderly puts them together, one holding the other, just to imagine what it might be like. Not a word is spoken, but those images are infinitely more poetic and rewarding than someone saying, “I'm lonely, I need to hold someone.” And if the viewer turned away for even a few seconds, the moment would be lost.

Ever since the advent of sound in cinema, this kind of visual storytelling has become something of a lost art. Even now, the very best filmmakers usually find a way to say more in their images than dialogue alone could ever convey. It's like Robert Altman once said, “Images are the reason for film, otherwise you might as well turn off the picture and call it radio.”

Indeed, in the 1940's, families used to gather around the radio, not the television, and listen to radio dramas. People were wizards in that medium as well. Orson Welles, for example, was an expert in the use of sound to tell a story, and later proved an innovator in the use of images too. Honestly though, a person who reads a magazine or cleans the house or lifts weights while “watching” a movie, is doing nothing more than listening to the damn radio. If one finds comfort in missing the entire point of this visual medium, then he or she might as well be living in the 1940's as far as I'm concerned. The images truly are the one and only difference between motion pictures and a radio drama.

I am not implying, however, that WALL-E is a silent film. That would be absurd, untrue, and a grave insult to the immensely talented sound design team. Pixar utilizes everything at its disposal here, image and sound in equal measure, to create a beautifully realized future world and a highly poignant tale. Still, WALL-E is director Andrew Stanton's “love letter” to the films he adores, many of which happen to be from the silent era. Sound effects and music may be accounted for, but dialogue would be superfluous.

In a recent A.V. Club interview, Stanton said:

We definitely felt like, “You know, we should look at the masters because these guys had decades to become the best at telling stories without the dependency of dialogue.” So we watched a Chaplin film and a Keaton film and sometimes a Harold Lloyd film every day at lunch for almost a year and a half, the story crew and the animation crew. And became pretty much familiar with their entire bodies of work. You walk away from that thinking, “What can't you tell completely visually?” These guys were just...everything seemed possible to convey. And you realized how much of that staging and legwork was actually lost when sound came in. People got lazy and just sort of relied on the dialogue to get stuff across.

Key word: lazy. Like Andrew Stanton, I'm a huge fan of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Harold Lloyd. So none of the references to those cinematic legends in WALL-E were lost on me. Overall, however, I would describe WALL-E as 2001: A Space Odyssey meets Jacques Tati, with a spoonful of Chaplin-esque pathos for good measure. Tati's comedy placed an emphasis on the marriage of image and sound (Playtime is so very brilliant), but dialogue was used sparingly. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey can be seen in the science fiction setting and pacing of WALL-E (not to mention the numerous homages, such as the autopilot that resembles HAL 9000), and while 2001 wasn't a silent film per se, it did keep dialogue at a premium.

However, WALL-E is more character driven than a Tati picture or 2001, it is told on a more intimate scale and remains, at its core, a simple love story, which invites the comparison to Chaplin. In fact, there is a scene in WALL-E that unmistakably recalls the famous ending of 1931's City Lights, where the flower girl realizes the true identity of the Little Tramp.


Above, Left to Right: Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin
Below, Left to Right: Harold Lloyd, Jacques Tati


Even for those who are not aware of the many references to other films, WALL-E should still be a great experience. So why is it causing some viewers to huff and puff in theaters? Unfortunately, we probably don't need to look beyond our own living rooms these days to find the answer. We live in a world where “Law & Order” reruns, “CSI”, and countless other programs have turned people into passive viewers. Television has essentially become a radio again (mind you, I'm not referring to all television, just the majority of basic network television).

Granted, when you are sitting in a comfy chair watching anything you are, in a sense, passive. But we all know that some films demand more of us than others, forcing at least our brains to engage in more active participation. This doesn't occur with most television programs, where the visuals serve little purpose, redundant dialogue is constantly bashed into our skulls (“Do you get it yet? Are you sure you get it?! One more time to be certain!”), and everything is conveniently wrapped up in a lengthy explanation that may or may not take place in a courtroom.

If you fall asleep during an average episode, only to wake up at the end, chances are you won't miss a beat playing catch up. Nothing is required of the viewer whatsoever, which is why people have fallen into this pattern of “watching” TV as they piddle around the house. “I'm listening,” they say. Then they “watch” a film like 2001 or Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven and wonder why they don't know what the hell is going on, or why they ultimately disliked it. Like the scene in WALL-E that I described above: if you look away, you are lost, and there is no dialogue “safety net” waiting to rescue you.

Hey, isn't that what WALL-E had to say about humanity in the future? People fall into a certain pattern of laziness (in our case, lazy viewers), they eventually accept it as the norm, and after enough time passes, the human race entirely forgets about what really matters. Ok, so things aren't quite that dramatic here, but my point remains: too many people have forgotten the importance of images in a film. Images are, or at least should be, the single most crucial ingredient in any motion picture (hence the term “motion picture”).

Pixar knows this, but has never proven it quite so effectively as in WALL-E. As much as I enjoyed the Toy Story movies, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, and Pixar's other great works, WALL-E has to be their most accomplished film to date. Is it perfect? No, and that's not what I'm arguing. In fact, to be fair, I don't think it lives up to the very best works of Keaton, Chaplin, or Tati, nor do I think it is quite the masterpiece that 2001: A Space Odyssey is. The environmental message is a bit forced (skyscrapers of trash are more numerous than real buildings?), the second half of the film is not as strong as the first, and so forth.

Still, when all is said and done, WALL-E is one of the greatest animated films of all time, perhaps in my own top five (top ten for sure). I would still place Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away, Walt Disney's Pinocchio, and Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies above it, while the finest of all, for me, may forever be Russian animator Yuri Norstein's A Tale of Tales. Nonetheless, WALL-E is a must see film. A special film.

There may be a few voices of dissent, but nothing can take away from Pixar's achievement here. When someone says Citizen Kane is “crap” (those who dislike it usually can't intelligently elaborate beyond that), does that make it any less of a film? No. It will always be held in high esteem by those who hold film itself in high esteem. By that same token, WALL-E will go down in history as one of the finest animated movies ever made. No amount of pissing, moaning, or texting "This is stupid" will ever change that.