TIFF '24: "The Wild Robot" brings Monet to a Miyazaki Forest

by Cláudio Alves

Many have rightfully said that animation isn't so much a genre as a different medium than live-action cinema altogether. Though many of the same rules apply, audiovisual grammar and specific dramatic codes, there's a depth of craft and intentionality to its image-making that exceeds what can be achieved between a camera and our material reality. Such rhetoric tends to manifest only when analyzing more avant-garde efforts in the realm of animation, but even the most mainstream of productions deserves these considerations. Chris Sanders' The Wild Robot is a good example, borne out of DreamWorks with eyes set on the future of its medium, expanding technological horizons while inventing new forms of cinematic beauty…

What makes The Wild Robot essential cinema is its aesthetic qualities, the plasticity of the frame. Yet, it's important to set the stage and recognize its specificities as a piece of storytelling for the family crowd. As adapted from the first in a series of children's books by Peter Brown, the film starts with a storm somewhere over the ocean. From thunder and revolving ways, an abstraction of destructive forces, a shipwreck leaves a series of robots marooned on the shores of an island. There are no humans around, only wildlife, so when one of the anthropomorphic mechanisms wakes in search of someone to aid, she must adapt to the unexpected environment and its inhabitants.

Her name is Roz, and her mission in "life" is to be of service to those who need it. Calibrated for some sci-fi future of ambiguous detail, she's shocked by the mercilessness of nature. Indeed, an audience expecting the clean, clear morality of typical kids' entertainment might be as horrified as Roz when the order of predator and prey surges visions of sudden death throughout the wilderness. The shock is used for humor, later for pathos, but Roz mostly takes it in bewilderment. Also, heartbreak when, being chased by a bear, the robot accidentally kills a mother goose and breaks most of the eggs in her nest. Only one remains and, when it hatches, Roz suddenly finds a purpose.

As much as The Wild Robot is about the possibilities of kindness as a survival instinct, it's foremost a tale of motherhood, how the responsibility of a child and the love one has for them inevitably changes the very fabric of the universe. As if by a miracle of benign AI – this is a fairytale, after all – Roz forms a family with the gosling named Brightbill, with the fox Fink as a sort of reluctant uncle always ready to dispense dubious advice. But there's further heartbreak on the horizon, for the natural world is slowly destroying the robot and Brightbill, a runt never meant to survive, faces the perils and imperativeness of migration once winter approaches.

Montages aplenty, including some that recall those training moments from cheesy 80s blockbusters, The Wild Robot rushes its way through a hefty runtime that might have been a challenge for younger audiences if the movie didn't flow so nicely. Much of that quality results from the film's emotional beats rather than its structure, whose literary origins are palpable, for better and worse. Simply put, Sanders is out to make you cry, and he'll use every weapon in his arsenal to accomplish it, surging the pain of parental separation one moment to then explore the vicissitudes of grief the next, the fear for a whole community as the shadow of death looms large over all.

It's a risky proposition that only works because of a solid voice cast led by Lupita Nyong'o in a performance that deserves more respect than it'll get – such is the fate of those who act beneath a spectacle of animation, even the Oscar-winning superstars of the bunch. Composer Kris Bowers is also working overtime to ensure you feel all the right emotions, donning his best Thomas Newman drag when the situation calls for it. But when the story demands something grander, he'll divest the affectation and surrender to the rousing sound of a full orchestra. In musical paroxysms of maternal lament or fiery action, he's the film's secret weapon. Still, many will find his work too forceful by half.

I imagine the look of The Wild Robot won't be as potentially divisive. Much of the technical foundations of this aesthetic have been explored on the site, when I went to the Annecy Film Festival and met with the movie's team. But the final result is still more impressive than the demos and half-rendered sequences I got to see back in June. The Wild Robot hones on the fine middle point between glossy sci-fi animation, cartoon sensibilities, and a painterly feel that has been described by Sanders as a Monet painting of a Miyazaki forest. While the spaces and characters were built as 3-D models, their surfaces are finished with what amounts to computerized brushstrokes, swaths of flat color layered on top of one another like oil paints or translucent splashes of watercolor.

Scale is often handled through degrees of detail, as if each shot were a different painting whose planes and depths dictated a unique approach, with the farthest recesses of the image growing in simplification. Literalism goes out the door as does mimesis, yet the fine qualities of light and color tend to obey reality – lest we forget Sanders was the one that brought Roger Deakins into animation with How to Train Your Dragon. From all these factors comes an array of visions that feel fresh, yet beholden to the artistry of yesteryear. It's not just the craft of traditional 2-D animation being updated, but the tenets of 19th-century Impressionism applied to Hollywood moviemaking.

Even for those unconvinced by Peter Brown's narrative, its sappy sentimentality, and growing distance from the story's initial frankness, there's enough in The Wild Robot as a work of pure cinema to warrant respect, admiration, mayhap awe. Flying scenes are especially gorgeous, be they a kaleidoscope of butterflies or the geese migration, but the anatomical adaptability of Roz might be my favorite element, a triumph of character animation that's virtually peerless in the context of 2024 mainstream American cinema.

The Wild Robot was a Gala Presentation at TIFF and is coming to cinemas this week, a Universal Pictures wide release. Don't miss it!