AVATAR

2010-4_27 AVATAR
“Avatar” is a very familiar story in new dress provided by some new technologies. The first thing that I saw in the movie was it was an updated version of “Star Wars,” with more sophisticated military hardware and more convincing fantasy figures and animals. The second thing that came to mind was “Dances with Wolves” by way of “Surrogates,” as other reviewers have mentioned. Someone originally antagonistic to a group is converted to the enemy’s point of view due to a deepened understanding of who they are a where they are coming from. This occurs in both “Dances with Wolves” and ‘‘Avatar.” I’ll discuss “Surrogates” a little later. Since “Avatar” is basically a cowboy and Indian narrative or framework one could also compare it to “New World,” Terrence Malik’s film about Pocahontas and John Smith. Princess Neytin (Zoe Saldana) from one of the tribes that live on Pandora, which is a lush moon in the Alpha Centauri star system, saves Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) from death when she intercedes and persuades her father, the tribal chief, not to harm him. Following that she is also assigned to show him the ways of the Pandorians. The at-first unwelcome intruder becomes not only the love interest of the princess, but eventually a leader of the tribe himself. That transformation and how it happens is the main thread through the narrative. It is, so to speak, the emotional and mythic armature around which a sensual spectacular is built.
The year is 2154. The bad guys in this narrative are the Americans, but not the U.S. Cavalry mowing down the Indians and the buffalo, although the mind-set of these future Americans is strictly out of the 19th century. Indeed, we would recognize them right away. A predatory Mining Corporation called RDA is interested in a vast underground store of a precious metal called unobatium. The problem is a colossal ancient tree—it is called Hometree by the natives—sits on the buried veins of unobatium, so they need to displace the tribe, that is, move them out of their way. But the tree is sacred to the Pandorians and the RDA has not yet discovered how to peacefully move them elsewhere. This is where the “Avatar Project’” comes in. A scientist named Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) is in charge of a surrogate idea as a way to penetrate the ranks of the tribe. The ‘spy’ lies down in a casket-looking locker and is transported into the body of a thin and tall Pandorian replicant, a genetically engineered hybrid copy of the blue 10 feet tall Na’vi, what the locals call themselves. It is a synthetic version that can pass as the real thing, at least in appearance. James Cameron was asked why he selected blue as the color of the Na’vi. He said it was a pleasant color. Well, yes, but it is also a celestial color, the color that represents the feminine principle and the Na’vi worship a Mother Goddess named Eywa who the tribe believes units all hearts through a spiritual networking of “mirrored neurons.” Blue represents the truth, like in True Blue. So it is Jake and Grace who go back and forth and provide information for the CEO of RDA and to Col. Miles Quanitch, the Military man in charge of the Blackwater-like private security unit employed by RDA. The Special Unit does all the heavy lifting for the Corporation, and all the dirty work. The Colonel is a vile commander who views the Na’vi as pawns in a game he is master of, mere bothersome obstacles to be removed. He has utmost confidence in his weaponry and fighting men. Hometree is a notion mocked by the Americans. Like who cares? All the trees are sacred to them! But the natives are earnest nature worshippers; they practice a form of pantheism, that there is an imminent divinity in Nature, a profound and mystical sense of Animism and identification with the powers of Nature. Attunement with natural forces is the goal of life for the Na’vi.
Naturally, the vile Colonel gets his way and his military machine attacks and destroys the Hometree. There is an implicit linkage to our aggression and occupation in Iraq, as, for example, the phrase “shock and awe” is used by the Colonel. He also sees both Grace and Jake as turncoats, traitors to be dealt with the ultimate penalty. The Americans are like riding in their own ‘Death Star,’ and the colonel is Darth Vader on a rampage for his Corporate Bosses. They are not only aggressive and predatory they are gross, insensitive, and totally lacking in respect for the other guy’s ways and their spirituality. They behave like they are stuck in the 19th Century; they are motivated by Manifest Destiny, land-grabbing, and finding where all the gold was hidden. They were bent on defeating the natives and taking whatever resources there were to have and exploit. And typically, Cameron stages a huge battle at the end which ends, most improbably, with the Na’vi and the wild animals of Pandora, who come to their aid at the last minute, victorious. The battle is a pandemonium of flying beast ridden by Na’vi warriors, American helicopters, confrontations between soldiers and beasts in the jungle below. All of it is a whiz-bang spectacular of color and action, a really hyped up and expanded video game.
Most of the people I talked to who saw the film in the theater always stressed the beauty of the film and had little to say about the content of the narrative. The film needs to be seen two of three times to get the whole in focus, to unify all its levels and elements. There is no doubt that the flashy aspect of the new technologies can grab your eyeballs and hold then throughout the more than two hours of the film. There is no doubt about how spectacular it is, especially the natural (or surreal) look of Pandora, the luminescent plants and strange flowers and beasts and floating things of undescribable meaning. I rather liked the narrative, how carefully Cameron worked it out and how it was relevant to contemporary America, both to its character and wars, and its environmental issues.