Wall-E

Anyone who knows me knows that I will go on and on about why I love the Pixar films.  They tell great stories with great characters, but there is always so much going on beneath the surface of the film that I must have several viewings before all the layers begin to show themselves.

When WALL-E came out in 2008 I had little interest.  I knew it had something to do with robots, which to me meant futuristic, which meant I did not think it was for me.  But then we bought the boys a used copy in 2012.  Even then it took them watching it a couple of times before my interest peaked and I sat down to watch the whole thing.

First impression was, "Wow!  This is environmental and totally up my alley!", and "What a charming love story between WALL-E and Eve, ",  charmed as I was by the sweet homage to movie musicals with songs from Hello, Dolly!".  I couldn't believe it had not been on my radar.  I felt like the movie was made just for me, even down to the Peter Gabriel closing credits song.

But then I watched a couple of more times.  And some of the movie's other true-to-life layers hit me:  How corporate sponsorship is taking over EVERYTHING, and the way advertising tries to shove stuff down your throat that you don't really need, and the black humor about The Carts the humans travel around in, and being too out of shape to get themselves back in one if they happen to fall out.  Have you seen how many real life Wal Mart customers use those carts?

Then a few more viewings and the true poetry of WALL-E showed itself.  When the current captain of the ginormous spaceship that all humans have been living on for 800+ years is shown the pictures of Earth, something awakens in him.  Perhaps it is a connection to that soil we also call "earth".  Perhaps it is a longing to breath fresh air created by plants that have grown tall in the warm sun.  But the MOST poignant moment in the movie is when the captain is told (by an evil robot) that the only way humans can survive is if they stay on the ship.  He yells, "But I don't want to survive.  I want to LIVE!!!!!"   To me, there is nothing so inherently human as that will, that shear force that drives us to do almost inhuman things to keep going.

I am big believer in science and fact.  I question things I learned about the creation of earth and most other stories from the Bible.  There are scientific reasons behind the things once thought of as miracles.  But just because I am a big believer of science, that doesn't mean I have stopped believing in some type of higher power.  There are two things that keep me believing in God as creator of miracles:  The miracle of our beautiful planet, and that unstoppable drive of the human heart.  There is no way that human feature is not God-given, when you consider what we are made out of and where we have evolved from.

The last time I watched WALL-E I caught the very end of the movie for the first time, right before those credits roll.  The love song from "Hello, Dolly!" is just playing away, and I guess with my previous viewings I had already hopped up to do something else, assuming that the song is playing for WALL-E and Eve, finally together.  But no.  The people are all coming out of the ship, breathing the fresh air for the first time in their lives, and the camera pans out farther and farther, until all we see is our little planet.  Our beautiful blue Earth, in all of its diverse, life-giving glory.  That's the real love story in WALL-E.  The one between we humans and our miraculous planet that keeps us alive.  And when I think about all of the things, all of the science, that had to come together to give us this gift, my belief in God as protector, as creator of miracles, just swells out of me.