Avatar (2009)

(director: James Cameron; starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver)

To describe the experience of seeing James Cameron’s much-anticipated, twelve-years-in-the-making Avatar, it would be one of complete exhilaration tinged with nagging doubts. If you are looking for escapist cinema, look no further than an IMAX 3D screening of this film. For nearly three hours the environment Cameron has crafted completely enfolds us, as nearly as our minds can tell, we are on the planet of Pandora witnessing the discovery of some of the most spectacular and exotic lifeforms with our own eyes. The title Avatar refers to the clones of the indigenous blue humanoid species a team of human scientists have created and control in a way not entirely reminiscent of Being John Malkovich (although without the dialogue on the mind-body dilemma, which I suppose puts it in closer kin to the Matrix series); it very well could refer to what the audience experiences as well, removed of our own bodies for the duration fo the movie and transported into those of the film. At one point Marine protagonist Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington) muses that his real being as a human starts to feel more like a dream than his simulated being as an Avatar (which he switches between whenever his Avatar, infiltrating the indigeonous population, goes to sleep), and the audience should exactly understand that meta-sensation. It could be that we’re finally starting to approach the frontier where excessive CG is no longer a hinderance to film by fault that we still know that it’s fake, watching scenes of gigantic robotic battles with only a slight mix of appreciation for the craft and disinterest in the story. Finally, after far too long a wait, here is an example of a movie-going experience where the special effects add to the magic instead of detract from it. (Ever since audiences were rightly wowed by Jurassic Park, that magic was forever lost with the simple explanation “it’s all CG”. I think with Avatar we are simply amazed that it’s possible for humans to even dream up such spectacular imagery, the question of “how did they do that!?!?” is once again restored).

And yet… and yet as I said at the beginning, there is a nagging doubt left over after the movie has finished and we are returned to our pathetic, earth-bound existence trudging back to the car in the December snow. To be clear from the beginning, this is not a question of whether all the millions of dollars of technology was spent only for the sake of technology at the expense of any real story, as Michael Bay, Roland Emmerich, Gore Verbinski and fellow “Event Movie” directors gleefully commit to. The technology here is in full service to the story Cameron is trying to tell, I’m just not convinced it was a particularly great one to begin with. Yes, there numerous important messages and subtexts to be taken from the film (i.e. environmental conservation, tolerance of those different from us, communion with nature, corporate greed/militaristic fascism sucks, don’t be manslaughtering dicks unless the other guys were even bigger dicks to you first, and then in that case have at it, etc.) but for being such an imaginative cinematic experience, there’s a surprisingly large quantity of cliché that creeps in around the edges. The villain is easy to spot from the first frame, just look for the guy with an ugly-as-sin battle scar across his face… if you think you’re noticing some layered complexities in his character, give it some time, the sensation will pass; he fully commits to being the machine-gun wielding asskicker with a personal vendetta to see the protagonist destroyed at any cost by the end. You have the obligatory forbidden love between the two leading characters each from different worlds, the training montage, the huge action battle sequence where only the main characters are somehow able to evade incoming fire, and pretty much everything already said in the Lion King about the circle of life, except with some mildly suggestive ways the indigenous people literally ‘connect’ with nature that I’m sure Sigmund Freud would have a lot to say about. It’s a bit difficult to determine exactly what the movie’s final message is towards the preservation and tolerance of all lifeforms when the ending sequences clearly suggest that those who are able to open the biggest can of whupass are consequently the biggest of heroes (and ironically the human avatars still use machine guns and grenades to much greater effect than their adoptive species’ choice of bow & arrow and the natural spirits). Nevertheless, there is no denying that Avatar will probably be one of the top cinematic experiences in our lifetime; if you’ve been needing a vacation to someplace exotic, tickets to Avatar in IMAX 3D are a lot cheaper than tickets to Hawaii, and it’s probably much more exciting than the tour bus anyway.

(reviewed 12/18/09)

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