The Lorax

Movie, 2012, PG

Premise - In a town without plant-life, a boy wants to impress a girl by finding her a real tree. The only way to find a tree is to speak to the person responsible for destroying them, The Once-ler, and hear his story about his encounter with the speaker of the trees, The Lorax.

 

Review - This is a beautifully animated film. The colors are absolutely gorgeous, both in day and night scenes, with images that truly stick with you. Perhaps that is not speaking so much to the animation, as much as the original artist Dr. Seuss. Yet still, while the basic color scheme and shapes were created by Dr. Seuss, those animators really gave it life. 

 

The story itself is not as great. I imagine the source material of the original The Lorax was only a few pages long, and an entire story (complete with musical numbers for filler!) had to be created to stretch it out to a feature-length film. The same message may have been able to come across in a shorter format, perhaps. Though the messages of the story are powerful and even a bit complex, so it's worth creating a film.

 

Without having read The Lorax, I know what it's about - it's an allegory that teaches you to save the trees, or rather, save the environment. It would have been written decades before the mainstream recognition of climate change, and so now is even more immediately relevant than it was at the time it was written. I know Dr. Seuss was pretty incredible about political messaging in his stories.

 

Seeing the story fleshed out, there is also space for implications of sustainability, anti-capitalism, corporate greed, wealth disparity, manifest destiny... issues of environmental justice are, no doubt, inherently tied with issues of capitalism and it was dealt with REALLY well in one musical number alone.

 

To speak a bit more about manifest destiny - I'm not applying it to race here but species (but the logic is so easily transferable). The idea that we as humans have a right to dominate, that it is our destiny to have power. The idea that trees are not as important as humans, and therefore just exist for our convenience and will. This whole mindset makes The Once-ler truly believe in his own good intentions. What harm could he possibly be doing if he's serving his people? The assumption of manifest destiny taints his entire logic.

 

Another thing to touch on that is not as blatantly referenced in the film, but still food for thought, is the idea of sustainability. Actually, Thneeds (the product The Once-ler mass produces), actually seems like a sustainable, useful, conservative product? The idea of the Thneed is that yes, it uses the Truffula trees, but it replaces need for production of other items AND uses a renewable energy source (the trees grow back, and fast!) Thneeds are a multipurpose product that could REALLY cut down on fast-fashion and single-use paper products (i.e. paper towels). The issue was not with the Thneed itself, but rather the greed and lack of foresight. If The Once-ler had paced himself and made Thneeds a sustainable product, and also took the effort and care into replanting more Truffula trees, he could have actually helped the world here and produced more fresh air in the process...

Effort. Care. Mindfulness. These are also key themes. It takes care to unlearn ignorance. It takes care to change our current trajectory. But it is possible, and that's a hopeful message. I think the film also does an interesting job of looking at public opinion. The public, for the most part, believed the dominant discourse that trees were dirty and unnecessary. As soon as people started TALKING about trees as having a purpose, creating oxygen that means they wouldn't need to buy their own air (which is also an economic incentive for the general public), public opinion turned around pretty fast. In order to get more people to care, someone had to start openly caring first and serve as an example to follow (70/100).

 

Quote - There were actually several meaningful quotes in there! I like:

"A tree falls the way it leans. Be careful which way you lean."

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, It's not.

And the entirety of the song "How Bad Can I Be?"

 

What to watch for - The colors! The musical numbers! The film itself was meh.

If you liked this movie, I'd recommend Wall-E!

Based on the book by Dr. Seuss

Directed by Chris Renaud

Distributed by Universal Pictures