WALL-E, trashed Earth closer to reality than you realize

There are some fun movies at the theaters this summer. Mind you, I’m not one for romantic comedies. Quite frankly, I find romantic comedies to be neither.

I do enjoy a good futuristic action film. And who doesn’t love all the imaginary places you can go in a clever cartoon?

This weekend I saw a movie that’s sci-fi and fantasy all rolled into one. It takes place in the 28th century, and get this, the earth has been completely trashed. In fact there’s so much refuse that the only job still being done on our once pretty little planet is rubbish removal.

You can stop reading right now if you don’t want to learn more about the movie before you see it. But I promise, even if you keep reading, I’ll only write about the film’s fundamental premise and I won’t wreck the ending.

For the first half an hour or so the story revolves around two primary characters. These two creatures appear to be the only ones that survived the spoiling of the earth. One is a little trash compacting robot named WALL-E and the other is a cockroach. We’ve long been told that cockroaches would be the only things that might adapt and thrive as the planet gets continually more toxic, so the message to the viewer of what should be a foreseeable and avoidable self-destruction comes through loud and clear.

Against a backdrop of a squalid and abandoned city these two adorable cartoon characters still have each other. The cockroach plays along the robot’s metal casing while WALL-E sifts through the debris left behind by people that simply didn’t care what sort of effect their actions had on the planet, each other, or themselves.

WALL-E’s the last robot left to clean up this mess. And though he has been at it for 700 years, he is far from done.

Much like Hal, the computer in the sci-fi classic “2001 A Space Odyssey,” WALL-E’s electronic brain seems to have evolved into something a little more human than his programming would have intended. Consequently, like any sentient being who has ever gone to a transfer station or flea market, WALL-E finds booty in the debris that’s just too delightful to trash. WALL-E collects the good stuff and brings it home where he can treasure and preserve it.

It’s a cute but cautionary little tale. But there’s one thing wrong with this fantasy picture. It’s no fantasy.

You can see the real-life story by watching a different movie. This other film isn’t a cartoon and it does not have robots sifting trash looking for treasures. It has humans. It has children. It’s the Academy Award-nominated documentary “Recycled Life,” and it does a pretty good job showing the lives of the dump dwelling people of Guatemala City as they pick through the city’s refuse piles looking for recyclable items they can sell. Oh yeah, and they’re looking for something to eat.

In 2005, I had the opportunity to see how real this “trashed world” cartoon theory is. I met Guatemalan children with dog-bite scars they acquired while scavenging in the dump for the same scrap of food that a wild dog wanted. In the week I was there I didn’t meet a single dump child without those scars.

Assigned to write newspaper articles about the ghastly realities of a once beautiful landscape and its beleaguered people, I also met and interviewed an American woman, Hanley Denning. Denning went to Guatemala to learn Spanish but what she really learned was that she couldn’t leave those children from the dump behind; she just couldn’t forget them. I reported from inside Safe Passage, the organization she founded to help these children – each one a living, breathing WALL-E.

If you watch both of these movies, watch WALL-E first. Once you see “Recycled Life” and realize that the devastation of our planet isn’t pretend or futuristic, you may end up like Denning, unable to forget.

Tragically, Denning died in 2007.

If you would like to learn more about her life, the lives of the children she loved or to help continue her work you may visit www.safepassage.org.

Pat LaMarche of Yarmouth is the spokesperson for the Evergreen Mountain Resort & Casino referendum campaign. She’s the author of “Left Out in America” and may be reached at Pat

LaMarche@hotmail.com.