My "Avatar" Explainer

[grassfed]

(posted to piss-off the Jonah Goldbergs + the film's a great ride)

I felt that I sort of owed you dear readers some explanation as to why I believe Avatar is such a good film. I jotted down a few thoughts and hopefully this will explain it. Haters, feel free to move on to the next post.

Hasn’t it been a while since anyone has really understood what that phrase meant, “the magic of cinema?” It has been too long for me. It was 1977 and I was twelve years old. It was probably impossible to be twelve and not know Star Wars was coming. I don’t remember how I first became aware of Star Wars but I do know that it still holds the record for the film I’ve seen the most times in the theater. When I first saw Star Wars I was enthralled with everything about it. I recognized the archetypes immediately — Carrie Fisher was Rosalind Russell and Harrison Ford was Clark Gable. Good and evil plainly defined. The special effects were unlike anything any of us had ever seen on screen before. And yet, that wasn’t really the reason my sister and I kept getting right back in line to see it again. We were there because we liked the story. We liked R2D2 and C390. We liked the drama. We loved the satisfying ending. There wasn’t anything about Star Wars we didn’t like. And to this day the movie’s script still resides in my brain, every word.
I began my movie life as we moved from town to town, all over California as my mother sought new real estate to “fix up and sell.” My sister and I moved too soon to make any friends where we were. A few months down, we were on to the next town. What we had was a television. It didn’t take us long to figure out that the good stuff on TV wasn’t soap operas and game shows but black and white movies. We watched them all. Our friends became Fred Astaire, Rita Hayworth, Jimmy Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly, Peter Fonda – the list is endless. It wasn’t long before we, at 8 and 9 years old, were dressing up like Fred and Ginger and begging for a ride down to a movie house in the valley that still played those old movies. It was our whole world. We knew, somehow, that movies were better then. And this, mind you, was in the ’70s, arguably the best Oscar decade on record. But we were kids and the good movies were not within our grasp yet.

Of course as I became an adult and grew to love movies and recognize great directors my tastes changed. Woody Allen became someone whose work I most responded to – and thus, looking back on 1977’s Oscar year it never occurred to me that Star Wars should have beat Annie Hall. Star Wars was a cinema revolution but so was Annie Hall. No film has had more of an impact on the future of filmmaking, arguably, from that year than Annie Hall. Woody Allen changed the way people wrote movies. It was a romantic comedy that changed the way people talked to each other. To this day, romantic comedies take their lead from that film and it routinely makes the top of anyone’s list of the greatest films of all time. As much as I was devoted to Star Wars as a kid, I became more devoted to Annie Hall as an adult. Like Star Wars, Annie Hall is a film I know backwards and forwards, line by line.

Last night I saw Avatar for the second time. It has been three decades since I lined up to repeatedly watch a film. It has three decades since I had that exhilarating feeling of the absolutely new. Watching Avatar again I was trying to find the flaws I kept hearing about. Yeah, some of the lines of dialogue were corny and obvious. But since I already knew they were coming, and since I already knew the plot hovered closely to Dances with Wolves, those details were taken off the table. I sunk into the love story. I looked more closely at the meticulous details of the natural world of Pandora. I never felt cheated. I always felt like I was right there with Jake. He was my avatar, bringing me back into the alternate world and I never wanted to pulled back out, just like he didn’t. Every scene in the film is majestic and enthralling.

Perhaps that is why the ending of Avatar comes too soon. The second viewing for me was not in a theater you’d expect to respond to the movie. I have never been to that theater and heard it go so quiet – Cameron had this audience in the palm of his hand. They were stunned by what they were experiencing. It wasn’t just that the effects are so mind-blowing; it was that the story was holding them all the way through until the end where they clapped. It is the magic of cinema plain and simple. It isn’t going to change the world and it isn’t going to forever alter one’s identity. It isn’t even going to send home the message that one must “get busy living or get busy dying,” as many of the films do this year. But it is the work of a genius.

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[abelenkpe]

1. To each his own.

I thought it had a predictable paper thin plot. It's only redeeming quality was the stunning effects. It is worth seeing for the effects. But the story, direction, acting, choreography was predictable and belabored.

[patrice]

2. I have been an appreciator of great literature all of my life, Avatar, while probably not "great" IS

absolutely Extremely Good in almost all respects.

I have seen it twice now, both times in theaters in the heart of redneck land, and once followed by conversational critique from a couple of avid readers whom I know. It was applauded both times in the theaters and the only criticism my friends could offer is that (what it seemed to me that they were saying) they wanted more of "deus (Eywa in this case) ex-machina (organic in this case)" moment in the battle climax.

I put to them that such an all encompassing divine event would not have been in keeping with what Itiri (sp?) said to Jake under the Tree of Spirits when he went there to pray, which was, "Eywa does not take sides in the struggle. She only acts to restore the balance between living things" nor would it have been in keeping with Jake-the-damaged-hero's cultural perspective. I find this take on the plot much more in keeping with hard won post-modern sensibilities, and evolutionary aspects of Psychology, with which I closely identify, so I have no problem with the indeterminacy of Grace disappearing into Eywa and with the fact that the entire planet of Paragon itself did not attack the Aliens (which is what my friends thought should have happened).

These matters, plus the last frame of the pic, set us up perfectly for a sequel now and one of my grand-neices and several of my grand-nephews also said that they hope for at least one too, though ALL of us expressed a desire to see a sequel (as good as The Ring episodes) that does not lose its sense of itself in the mindless commercialism that such movies generate.

[patrice]

3. Re the dialogue: think Louis L'amour.

[grassfed]

5. Dialogue is closer to Frank Miller

and more effective than most superhero movies. Who goes to Star Wars for the dialogue? The dialogue - like all hero journeys is based on familiar motifs - has been singled out by anti-environmentalist, pro-war slobs like Jonah Goldberg in lieu of anything else. The rest of the movie utilizes thousands of the world's most brilliant artists and is simply beyond criticism, even by rightwingers.

[nashville_brook]

7. excellent comparison. a somewhat warmer version of Frank Miller.

[patrice]

4. I particularly enjoyed the highly interactive and detailed visualization of what we refer to as Gaia

[nashville_brook]

6. a standout part for me -- when Jake is first stranded at night

and he starts a fire to ward off the Pandora jackyls, and it turns out that's the exact wrong thing to do. to me, that was a wonderful metaphor for dominator culture, and set the tone for the rest of the story.

[grassfed]

8. "How do you know when it chooses you?" "It will try to kill you."

Predictable or not, the scene about taming the flying beast was just fun to watch. I also loved when the panther-like creature submits to Neytiri toward the end. The animation was incredible.