So Wall-E was recently released on DVD and Liz bought me a copy as a Thanksgiving gift. Last night's viewing further solidified my belief that it's one of the best movies to be released in recent memory. It should embarrass most production agencies that a "children's movie studio" (PIXAR) continues to release movies that probe consciousness in a way "indie" labels don't seem to grasp. While nearly all "ambitious" and "enthralling" titles, such as "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" and "Synecdoche: New York," tirelessly play on the all-too familiar (and yet bewilderingly hip) themes of human relationships and coincidence, Wall-E explores the quintessentially modern conflict of existence vs. survival through a universal (yet non-patronizing) narrative. I feel that all too often movies that receive counter-cultural acclaim are those that follow the Kant's classical analysis of humor: "sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing;" as if their absence of meaning or moral somehow validates them as "pure cinema." Take a tip from Wall-E: meaning parsed in a manner that everyone can understand; aesthetic morality expressed without post-modern pretension.
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