Iqra’i

I just got back from (finally) seeing Wall-E. So much ink, virtual and otherwise, has been spilt over the film that I’m not sure I have anything fascinating or original to share. My favorite moment of the film — besides the ought-to-be immortal phrase “I don’t want to survive, I want to live” — was very simple.

Wall-E bumps into the floating chair of one of the Axiom’s inhabitants, turning off the ever-present screen that keeps her virtually connected to all her friends. (Irony levels rising…) Suddenly, she sees the starfield beyond the ship’s windows, the panoply of multimedia advertisements, the wonder both of nature and of what man has wrought. She looks down: “Hey, I didn’t know we had a pool!”

That feeling it just familiar enough to make me wistful. Every so often, I pause and look around. Suddenly, instead of seeing “just” a tree, I remember the complicated dance of photosynthesis and respiration, the compact mystery of the atoms, the sheer alien wonder of a thing that turns sunlight into leafy shade. And then I blink, and check my email.

The joy of Wall-E isn’t in the story or the animation, but in the discovery. Like the best science fiction, the robots and spaceships are only there to make us remember the wonder of home.