avatar

I finally saw "Avatar" yesterday -- travelled to the IMAX at the city center for the occasion -- and I have to say it was impressive. It's a technical extravaganza that gets away with using a predictable and well-worn story line (if you've seen "Dances with Wolves" you've seen the low-tech version). The theme of this overused story, however, never gets old -- the notion that the aboriginal and tribal peoples whom we destroy wherever we come in contact with them are much wiser than we are. They know things about God and nature and what it means to be human that we've simply forgotten. This idea continues to resonate with modern audiences because they recognize it to be true.

The new-style 3-D technique of "Avatar" lifts the image out of the screen, so that viewers feel like they're inside the picture rather than out front of it. The effect is physical, somewhat disorienting, and gives some people flashes of vertigo. The computer-generated part of what is largely, in essence, an animated movie are impressive, but we've seen stuff like it before, in the Ring trilogy for example. But this film excels in its use of creative visual devices which move the story along.

For example, you already know, given their role as the wise aboriginals, that the N'avi have a much deeper bond with nature, and a stronger knowledge of it than humans. A lesser director than James Cameron might have chosen to depict this bond in symbolic terms, showing the medicine man chanting on the mountain top for instance. Symbolism is fine in college literature classes, but movies are a visual, concrete medium, requiring the N'avi to physically connect with their natural environment. As Dan in his review of the film at the Andyatthemovies site descibes it, the N'avi are so in touch with their planet they carry biological USB ports in their pony tails –- pony tails which they can use to peacefully and literally connect to virtually every creature living thing.

Dan also calls attention to the creative way Cameron establishes the consummate villainy of the invaders from earth, by making them the equivalent of the American invaders in Iraq and Afghanistan. References that clearly link the pillaging of the planet Pandora by mineral-seeking buccaneers from earth with current headlines are everywhere, from the weasely on-site corporate executive (shades of Exxon and Blackwater) at whose behest this piracy is occurring, to the bloodthirsty, technology-worshipping army colonel who vows to "fight terror with terror."

"Avatar" uses a very contemporary, pulpy, sensational, comic-book vehicle to tell a very profound truth, and like any movie that sums up its time, is both a statement and a reflection of our current perceptions of the truths of our world and ourselves. We now recognize that so-called "primitive" peoples knew and still know things about God, nature, and the essence of humanity that we've forgotten in our rational, secular culture. You don't have to look very far to see for yourself that this is true -- for example, the mostly-Catholic virgin worshipers of Mexico, partly modern, but with very strong, conservative ties to the past, seem to me to have an awareness of mortality and eternity that North Americans totally lack. All we have is reason, and reason tends to relentlessly orient itself to the bottom line. As the philosophers might say, reason is "necessary, but not sufficient."

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