Gattaca plus Jurassic Park and Pocahontas, then a little Transformers… scenes from any great battle, superimposed over the 1970s cartoon Tarzan-like jungles, add the tree of life from The Fountain…and you have Avatar.
I see so many films in this one, including writer director’s last work, Titanic along with Thunderbirds, and the motif of the lost city found in children’s stories Jungle book and Cities of Gold.
Is Avatar a mishmash over ambitious formula or a sweeping archetype?
Mostly, the latter.
If the way my piece reads is disparate ideas popping out and vying for attention in my mind – that’s because it is my honest response to this film. Links, similarities, messages, themes all jostled during and after the film… perhaps there is a little of this in the film itself. So this isn’t a thesis, it is a response
Avatar is the most visually stunning film I’ve seen, and my first in 3D. The top shot of flying creature’s red back was glorious, as was night time in the jungle.
It wasn’t easy to get into Avatar. I was unsure of the exact initial reason for Jake’s mission, and what Grace stood for at first. Chain smoking, dismissive, and seemingly anti disabled people, Grace did not yet seem like the champion of the indigenous peoples. And the story was slow to begin.
Dialogue is not always comfortable in James Cameron’s films, but I felt that here the corny movie Americanisms were deliberately being mocked and also used as character markers. Jake’s language improves as he comes to understand the Na’vi better.
I noted that clothes change as characters get closer to the Na’vi. The avatars all start with silly baseball clothes that are ill fitting, but Jake soon goes native in all ways and wears very little. But Grace never sheds her clothes and always stands out in crowd shots with her red top. Is there something here on natural beauty without clothes?
Dramas are always seeking to create tension and often this is sought too much. Having Jake at odds with the woman that would be a friend and co-fighter felt like a scriptwriting by numbers structure – the kind of thing that courses and books tell you must be there. I would like to feed back that these never feel comfortable, and are often profoundly irritating, and I do find Cameron errs on the side of formulaic, with his attempts to keep tension whether it be yet another leaping beastie in Avatar, or Jack being handcuffed in a flooding room in Titanic.
I also didn’t care for the characters as much as I might have. It is tempting to say that I cared for titanic’s Jack and Rose more; but that is with retrospect, rewatching the film many times over a decade, Kate Winslet having become my favourite actress. In Avatar the actor’s faces where mostly unfamiliar to me in a new story and setting which I have only just seen for the first time.
The lack of maximum people power wasn’t an overall weakness. If asked why haven’t I given this 5 stars, I would simply say – that it wasn’t the film that I would have made. I’d have had less action and more complex dialogue. In fact, truly, I personally would not have made this film.
But I am very glad that James Cameron did. It has vital and timely messages, about our treatment of other peoples, invading other territories for our own financial gain, and a spiritual oneness with nature’s energy.
This is a deeply spiritual film. It seems to draw on native American beliefs, but also Eastern ideas about us all being one and part of an ongoing unified organism. This idea is found in new age or new spirituality thinking, which is often popular in the West. I wonder what Neale Donald Walsch would make of this film and if he would be happy for me to say that I think his understanding of God would at least to some extent mesh with this movie.
Machines in Avatar are never impressive, but the jungle is. Machines seem weedy, childish, almost like gnats. I recall no architecture in the film – cf Titanic about a ship and the ocean, but no buildings. (However the official website does show a city – a decaying, rough Gotham or Bladeruuner sort of anti utopia). Avatar focuses on insides of crafts and camps or the great outdoors – contrasting to the glorified Metropolis (often New York like) featuring in so many American films.
Titanic has a long piece known as the ode to the ship where not so much special effects are showcased with little narrative, but Cameron wants us to engage with and be impressed with the world we will share with the characters. He wanted us to be blown away by the mighty liner so that we could share in the hopefulness of those who sailed on her – and then torn apart with the ship and its passengers’ dreams and loves when it sank.
He has employed a similar ploy in Avatar. Cameron wants us to explore the world he has created – with a huge amount of thought – so we can see what Jake is getting involved in – and more importantly – a world that we love so we are wrenched apart too at its destruction.
The world’s name is Pandora: a box that should have been left well alone, but its keeper couldn’t resist. But in the legend, Pandora is given the box – in Avatar, earth dwellers go out to a world not in their possession or even proximity.
Cameron’s signatory one word title has two meanings: an avatar is a graphic interface of a computer game user; and the manifestation of a deity or higher form, or giant. But in this film, ‘Avatar’ is subverted, because the humans – who believe they are the higher form – take on the bodies of a giant people who stand taller than humans in many respects. Their god is a tree – contrasting to human or animal forms so that nature growing from the ground is the biggest spectacle and highest being in the story.
The life energy and tree emblem is a discussion for another time.
The end of the film is less spiritual than other parts. Thus far, Jake has learned to kill with love and respect for the creatures he has hunted. This reminded me of Shekhar Kapur’s ideas about Walsingham in Elizabeth, who understood this 16th C English Spy Master as Krishna: killing those he must with compassion, never hatred. The Na’va re not vegetarian then, but the deer like creatures are slain with a prayer of thanks to the animal and their deity. Neytiri was unhappy to have to kill the dog like creatures to save Jake from their wrath, and later is able to work with the dogs as friends against the attacking humans. It’s almost Lion King here with the Circle of Life (from Elton John’s theme). The theme song here is called ‘I see you’ – about an inner knowing of another.
We accept Sigourney (grace)’s death as being returned to the great spirit and the tree, but we cannot loose any other main characters on the good side. The evil Colonel cannot be forgiven or change – he must die after the traditional one to one final combat. It was disappointing for me, that there is simply death for the colonel and he never really has a chance to regret or renounce. peaceful diplomacy worked with the native people, but is not tried on their own.
