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"Avatar ": Accept no substitutes !

Posted by Bambi B (A) on January 5, 2010 at 17:23:18

PAINTING: "The Temptation of William Blake"

Mates,

At Christmas dinner with my attorney "Bruiser" and family and friends, we had the impulse to see "Avatar" and saw it in 3D (not Imax) at a cinema in Woodland Hills, CA.

I had not seen a movie in a cinema since the Napoleonic era seagoing "Master and Commander" in 2003 and the AMC Promenade Woodland Hills was a good reminder why- the 350 lb. woman on my right was eating boiled hot dogs dripping in catsup, popcorn, and slurping Coke the whole movie and in contrast to the light-footed Na'avi alien warriors, my feet were stuck to the floor. The man on my left took three cel phone calls before turning off his phone, and there was hoard of talkers, screamers, clappers, and wrapper-rattlers. However, Avatar is so lusciously visual and immersively involving in the look, after about 30 minutes, I had no trouble eventually ignoring the cud-shewing cow on my right and trained rectum on my left. I even began to stop thinking all the time about how something was accomplished and let it all soak in. The main problem was trying to take in all the details flashing by. Even in moments of apparatne repose in the action, there is still so much happening visually there’s no respite- I was forced to pay attention every second in case I’d miss some interesting feature.

As others have written, the story is in places semi-trite, and demi-cliched- and the plot is quite similar to "Dances with Wolves" in which the sensitive white man swoops in and saves the child-like natives from capitalist/military imperialism, an extreme and quite simplistic form of allegory. However, in this case, the familiarity of the general structure does allow a liberation to allow concentration on the visual cornucopia- a plethora of cornucopias- multitudinous plethoras of cornucopias.

There's a consistency of Cameron's movies- so far, they have progressively intensified a theme of the hubris of technology- in the "Terminator" , robots designed for war decide humans are superfluous, the "Abyss" shows aliens perfectly adapted to their environment through a kind of organic technology, "Aliens" show the problems associated with colonization, and we now know to never proclaim that any ship is "unsinkable". In some way, technology- especially the the grander the scale and narrower of purpose- seems to turn on it's creators.

And, consistently, it's strong females who are the heroes. Linda Hamilton ultimately saves the Human world from Schwarzenegger's Terminator, Kate Winslett rescues DeCaprio, and Sigourney Weaver defeats the Alien- several times- even after her death. In "Avatar" it's a tall blue female alien who inspires and instructs Jake on how to defeat the encroaching military/imperialist/capitalists. This presents a philosophical problem for me. Like Costner in "Dances", the newly-minted warrior Jake becomes superior to those who lived in that mode their whole lives and in their own environment. And one may notice that Jake does in the final battle supplement the Na'avi archers with a huge machine gun.

Still, while "Avatar" has been criticized for being derivative and somewhat forced, this kind of story-telling is somewhat of a relief as the familiarity allows one to concentrate instead on the relentlessly amazing images. I sometimes feel with Cameron movies that he begins with images he wants to make and then makes a story that can include them. And , he has of course made astounding and memorable images far greater in proportion to memorable dialogue.

Ironic too, as of course, it is capitalism- it is said to have cost $300,000,000 for the movie and $150,000,000 to distribute and promote- and over-the cliff technology that made the movie possible. The 3D affects are astounding- the 3-D planes, including the subtitles sit in front of the characters and, like other Cameron movies, the detail is impeccable, the editing tight as hell, the music ethereal and pounding at the same time. For my taste there was a sometimes too much emphasis on highlighting various technologies of 2154, like the 3D terrain models used for battle planning. This aspect was reminiscent of "2001" and does serve to heighten the intrusiveness/dominance of technology into natural environments, the way in which this also emphasizes the differences between the Na'Avi tribe- something akin to Hopis whose hair can talk to trees and flying dragons- and the U.S. military who are single-mindedly brutal and robotic operatives on the orders from large corporations- much like their behaviour in 2009. In "Avatar", Pandora's Box is a stand-in for Afghanistan and Iraq.

One quibble I have with Avatar is that while there is an elegant language invented by a Ph.D for the Na'avi, the Americans 150 years form now still speak in delusional, gung ho military jabber from 1989 talking mission objective parameters and "Let's kick some ass for Halliburton" I mean, "Let's go get that "Unobtainium" under the tribal village that we deserve". The term "Unobtainium" too is surprisingly weak for the endlessly inventive Cameron- it's a comic term used by engineers for impossibly perfect materials. Architects and structural engineers refer to "skyhooks" in the same way- to hold something up by grappling hooks on clouds.

Cameron movies do suffer a bit from the kind of staccato, mechanical dialogue and this I attribute to Cameron's desire to sublimate dialogue to image. As well, there is an apparent need to control every single aspect of his movies- he writes everything that he films and one gets the sense that he is rejects outside creative input except the necessary division of labour necessary in support of his vision. Like Orson Welles, Cameron strives to be the complete auteur- besides writing, producing, directing, and editing, he designed the Na'avi personally as well as many other details of the machines. He also designed the 3-D digital video camera system- which is really brilliant, as it uses two cameras spaced apart the distance of human eyes and then the cameras tilt angle in towards each other when focusing on near objects- thus creating a realistic sensation of depth of field. More technology imitating natural processes, another incarnation (remember the Terminator was a mecho-electonic robot with skin over it) of a desire to see technology meld with the organic.

All in all, I recommend seeing Avatar highly, just for the visual miracle and with the dialogue and story being familiar, one need only relax the analysis portion of the brain and luxuriate in what you see and the stunning way the movie was put together.

Cameron’s success seems to depend on his meticulous control of everything that happens. His brother, a former Marine in the Gulf War, in conversation once mistakenly referred to him as "dictator" instead of "director" and his other brother said that he was the actor in "Abyss", portraying a dead sailor in a sunken submarine from whose mouth a small, live crab emerges- a scene which Cameron felt needed to be done 41 times,..

Cameron's general attitude seems to be to reject anything he didn't think of himself, is too energised to waste any time on play and humour, and semi-permanently irritated that the whole World is just too slow-witted and slow moving for him- which is it ! Cameron is one of the most brilliant and creative engineer-artists and the fact that only three weeks out "Avatar" has already taken in $1 Billion speaks to the intense interest and wide appeal his movies generate.

See "Avatar" in Imax 3-D and is you're like me, you'll come out of the theater feeling this poor Planet Earth is just too terribly dull- why, in my area code, human footsteps aren't even phosphorescent!

Cheers,

Bambi B

Edits: 01/06/10

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