Most do not live the lives of relative luxury we do, but one of the promises of globalism has been said to be an elevation of those who are in poverty. Will those living in Brazil, Mexico, Kenya, or China one day know lives with better amenities,health care, and basic nutrition? Or will the same web of post-colonialism, transnational banking dealing from decks stacked against the poor, and corrupt government regimes keep third world countries rooted in poverty?

The Sleep Dealer is an examination of American globalization as it impacts our lives today, where resentment to illegal immigration in America is as high as it ever has been, but where there are still jobs to be had for those who brave the crossing (at least, prior to our economic woes). The world of the Sleep Dealer is not so different from our own, except in a few very important ways.

The United States of the sleep dealer is mostly seen indirectly, through the lenses of telepresence drones, or in the cramped confines of virtual operator stations where soldiers pilot drones to protect corporatized water in places like Mexico. America appears to be sealed off completely to immigration, at least from Mexico. A wall has been built, and it’s guarded by remote-controlled cameras with heavy machine guns. A future that seemed much less implausible 2 years ago when the anti-immigration sentiment seemed to reach its peak.

The U.S. of this future still requires cheap labor, even if it cannot abide the physical presence of immigrants, legal or otherwise. In this near future, virtual reality technology, portrayed in a way that would fit in with any cyberpunk novel (a series of plugs along the arms and shoulders that allow a kind of neural interface), allows the poor to work within the States. It’s best not to think too hard about the portrayal of the equipment here, which seems more tailored toward a particular visual aesthetic than making logical sense. What was with the gas masks piping in oxygen? Nevertheless–

The backdrop of the world in the Sleep Dealer feels lived in, well worn, and not implausible. Our protagonist is an intelligent young man with an interest in escaping his tiny, water-impoverished farmstead. He tinkers with hacking telecommunications satellites as a means of escape, but soon he overhears something that he should not, and the events of the story are set into motion.

In the aftermath of a tragedy, Memo (a very Gibsonian name, I thought) travels to Tijuana to receive the implants that will allow him to work in the virtual labor factories. He meets a woman, a writer who sells her memories uploaded to the network, who takes an interest in his painful past and whose stories about Memo are funded by a mysterious buyer.

I’ll say no more about the plot, except to say that while this is a science fiction film, it is also an independent film in that sense that it is not the tightly shot, leave-nothing-unanswered big studio style of storytelling. The cinematography is often dreamlike, and the story’s gentle narration reinforce this. The story in some ways feels like a character’s lucid dream.

It’s a contemplative film in its pacing as well. Those expecting a tightly plotted thriller or action film should look elsewhere. This is a film that is more interested in letting the audience come to its own conclusions than lecturing morally (or otherwise).

This was something different than what we are used to seeing. While some of its ideas may not seem so fresh to long-time readers of science fiction, I don’t think this is something we’ve ever seen portrayed this way on the silver screen. It’s worth picking up on DVD or renting at the very least.

WALL-E succeeds in many, many ways, but the most fascinating aspect for me was the extent to which Pixar relied on nonverbal communication to convey the story.  I have a strong feeling that in preparation for this film, the animators watched reels and reels of silent comedy films; Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin especially.  Watch the movements of WALL-E, and I think you will see some of the exaggerated mannerisms of those silent film stars.  Wall-E is all angles, but angles that can change their composition to one another, so he meets the basic principles of computer character animaton established by John Lasseter so many years ago with Luxo.  He can squash and stretch.

(This review contains spoilers.)

The PIxar animators are so good at this with WALL-E that it’s almost easy to forget that he’s made of metal until the film reminds you so violently in places.   And contrasted with Wall-E’s square, ridgid shape is Eve’s levitating upside-down egg form.   It’s a simple way to distinguish feminine from the ridgid, angular male –but her character is not so simple.  The first time she blasts the hell out of the deserted Earth, you realize that they’re playing with that notion as well.  EVE is bad ass.

I would have loved to watch this movie with a handful of children and tried to pinpoint exactly the moment they fall in love with WALL-E and Eve.  For an emotive garbage compactor on wheels, beaten up and over 700 years old, it is  it’s almost surprising that he elicits the audience’s empathy so readily.  His appearance is not traditionally cute (although the large eyes in the design definitely fit the cuteness visual pattern).  Pixar spends precious minutes of screen time early on establishing WALL-E’s character.  We see a robot who has deviated from his program, who has developed a personality and a soul.

These are the kinds of moments you will never see in a Dreamworks picture.   Dreamworks doesn’t understand that it’s not your rendering engine or the voice actors that make your animated feature.  Pixar punches an especially big hole in the voice actor myth by having two protagonists barely voiced at all. Dreamworks wants a laugh, but it doesn’t understand that to get a laugh, you have to make the audience care.

So many reviews I have read have focused on the message over the substance of the story.  It’s easy to do that at this point because everyone expects a Pixar film to be far above most other movies in the story category.  Ratatouille, while being perhaps one fo the weakest in the story department, owing to the extreme revisions the project went through once Brad Bird was brought onto the project, it was still better in story than most anything else released that year.

And yes, the message here by Pixar, particularly when it comes to the human race, is a disturbing one (in a good way_.  The film’s director insists that they didn’t set out to portray the future human race as fat blobs who can’t get out of the hover-recliners and spend every minute of their lives consuming something.  And I suspect this vision really did grow organically from the simple seed of a concept:  the last robot on Earth.

And that’s how a great message is born.  It is not forced.  It never feels forced here, and it’s always up to you to draw the conclusion yourself.  There is no preachy “if everyone is special, then nobody is special” line like in The Incredibles that explicitly states the theme.  Those kinds of statements are the tell of a writer who lacks confidence in his audience.  They are not to be found in WALL-E.

It is this message and the handling of it that makes WALL-E Pixar’s most amazing film yet.  Consider that this is a G rated movie, and think about how it portrays Earth as a barren, garbage-covered rock.   The opening is the bleakest in a children’s film I have ever seen.  Everywhere, we see the signs of crass commercialism.  The BuyNLarge logo becomes the spectre of doom.  We recognize its meaning immediately, as we drink from our CocaCola sodas and contemplate our next shopping spree at Walmart.  Even the ending feels ambiguous, if you leave out the credits sequence.  Will humans succeed in recolonizing the Earth?  Their first tentative steps on solid ground do not convey confidence.

Finally, I want to comment on the absolute brilliance of that final scene where for a few moments, Eve believes that WALL-E has lost his unique spark once she has repaired him.  It mirrors the opening sequence so beautifully and perfectly that I wanted to shout in joy when I realized what they were doing.   When WALL-E stares blankly at EVE and then begins to compact his most precious belongings, finally running over his friend the cockroach without a care, the audience in my theatre grew more silent that I can remember an audience being in years.  The tension was so perfect and tight that I could have plucked it like a string.   “Did she replace the part that made WALL-E who he is?” everyone wondered.  And given the film before, I was not entirely convinced that they would bring him back.

Of course they did, and it’s easy to see that they would on the outside of the story.  But it’s a mark of fantastic storytelling that from within the story, you believe that the inevitable might not happen, and that Pixar might just give us the most downbeat ending to a children’s film since Old Yellar.  It would have been a Flowers for Algernon moment, almost.   It is tempting to think that I would have preferred such an ending, but–No. I don’t think I would have.  I came to love WALL-E too much over the running time.  A happy ending for him was only appropriate after his hero’s journey.  I cannot even speculate how Pixar could have made this film better.  It’s perfection is neigh-ironclad for me.

Not only is this the best Pixar film yet, it is easily the best science fiction film of the decade.  What was the last film you saw that examined things like the meaning of conciousness and the fate of future humanity?  That didn’t feature 2.4 explosions per minute and a vapid and attractive femme fatale that only serves to embarass half the population (and more.  See Wanted for an example of that).  That Pixar has made the best science fiction film in recent memory should come as no surprise to me, but it does.  Sometimes you lose track of what it is that makes science fiction great, and why it has inspired the fascination of millions since the first H.G. Wells stories.  It takes a simple, pure experience like WALL-E to remind you just what that thing is.  I can’t put words to it, but I can point to the screen and say, “There.  There it is.  That’s it.”

We need to write more like that.

Nobody believes me when I tell them that I think Fiddler on the Roof is the best science fiction musical tragicomedy ever.

Fiddler on the Roof, at its core, is about a slightly old-fashioned man experiencing future shock. In a time of great cultural change, Tevye’s ways, the old ways, are repeatedly assaulted. First, his daughter Tzeitel refuses her arranged marriage and begs to be allowed to marry the poor tailor that she loves. And Tevye relents! He overcomes his culture shock, his fear of the new, and realizes that things won’t be so bad this way. Then, his second daughter rebels, asking for only his blessing for her wedding, not his permission, and again, he relents! One again, he overcomes the cultural bonds of tradition, moving forward with the times. As a modern viewer, I felt such pride for the human race, that he could see through the old things and allow passion to bloom.

Then, the tragic turn. Tevye’s third daughter has fallen in love with a non-Jewish Russian, and asks to marry him, but Tevye cannot allow this. He has found the line that he cannot cross. He becomes a victim of future shock and it destroys him. He cannot speak with this daughter again, and you can see that the man is absolutely devastated by his decision, and yet still he remains firm. This moment… “on the other hand… on the other hand…” there is no other hand! It was one of the most moving scenes of any musical for me. Rationality loses in the end, but I think the moral, from this perspective, is just that, perhaps we cannot force change too quickly without breaking the things that we wish to preserve through societal upheaval.

It’s not that long ago that marrying for love seemed like an outlandish concept, even a speculative one. Fiddler on the Roof may not have been written as a SF story, but it does what a great science fiction story does; it deals with the intersection of people and ideas; in this case, the traditional man of Tevye, and the idea that tradition not need hold in opposition of love. It needs no robots or rocket ships. The future does not always come in the form of technological advancements.