Rapturous and Transporting ‘Avatar’ Stirs the Emotions on the Highest Level

by Sam Juliano

     Ultimately, one visits movie theatres with the expectation of having their intellect challenged, their mind engaged and their emotions stirred.  Few films pull off this nearly unattainable hat trick, as the brainy films are often models of frigidity, the poignant fare often leaves little to think about as its premise or main characters may be contrived or stereotyped, and the entertaining films are fun at the moment but forgettable after one leaves the theatre.  James Cameron’s previous film, Titanic, released all the way back in 1997, succeeded on the last two counts, but failed miserably on the first, leaving cinema fans with a hollow shell of a movie that now makes people wince when they hear it’s title brought up.  Earlier films like The Abyss, Terminator 2 and Aliens never explored the emotional possibilities of the characters, relying on some scattered humor and male bonding to fill in the gaps.  It may have partially succeeded at the time, but few would make claim that any of these films are not primarily seen now for their technical prowess first and foremost.

    Five years ago Cameron announced that his next film would be a technologically astute blend of live-action and computer-generated imagry that would alter the cinematic landscape.  His story of humans invading the planet Pandora in the year 2154, begins as an exploratory tale involving a team of two scientists and a crippled ex-Marine named Jake Scully who replaces his late twin brother in a scientific experiment, by which he assists in roaming the planet with other remote-controlled bodies, which have been cloned from human and indigenous DNA (the avitars of the film’s title).  This distant world is the source of a valuable and expensive mineral.  The controlled beings are a close approximation of the of the planet’s native Na’Vi, a tall, blue and cat-like species. Jake begins his “sojourn” as an observer, and he soon discovers the beauty, enchantment and danger of Pandora. 

     But then the story takes a drastic turn when Colonel Miles Quaritch requests that Jake “spy” for the coroporate bosses, a request that Jake agrees to after he’s promised exorbitantly expensive surgery to repair his damaged spine.  Predictably, but no less compellingly Jake learns the culture and mores of Na’Vi tribe from a beautiful warrior Neytiri, with whom he immediately develops a permanent bond with.  Of course the immersion into the tribe allows Quaritch to gain the tactical intelligence he needs to enact complete obliteration of the indigenous population.  A large part of this number is located directly above the planet’s biggest vein of the ultra-precious metal “unobtanium” and if the human leader of this mission, Parker Selfridge is unable to accomplish success by willing complicity, he’s prepared to employ lethal force.  Sully at first agrees with the plan, but after he (in his ‘avatar’ form) falls in love with Neytiri, the story borrows the white-turned-Indian plot thrust of Dances With Wolves.  But Cameron is no fool and he knows the emotional prospects of  a storytelling device where an oppressed people can rise up with the help of one, smitten by true love, and shoot an arrow into the advanced barbarians that threaten their very existence. 

     The narrative device is hardly original but it serves as a potent underpinning to the awesome spectacle that plays out here, culminating in a final hour of action-packed intensity that has the thrills of an endless roller coaster, filled with all the genre conventions, like hanging from the end of a cliff, falling in a canyon into a cascading river, or an all-out CGI battle, a la Return of the King.  But Cameron and his technical staff have succeeded with some nifty digital deception that has raised the bar for such technology.  Hence Avatar pulsates, almost breathing a life of its own in it’s conversion from movie to immersive experience.  A dominant percentage of the film’s locations are quite apparently CGI too, inducing one to wonder if they should called this an “animated film with live-action” or a “live-action film with some animated aspects and sequences.”  Such is this seamless immersion of what is real and what is not to create an illuminative world of arresting images, swirling, incandescent colors and an awe-inspiring beauty that elevates one’s consciousness to a state of spirituality rarely aspired to, much less achieved in any film.  There is an arresting naturalism that almost leaps off the screen which is populated by sumptuous images of day-glo vegetation and the exotic creatures controlled by the Na’Vi.  The lengthy stretches of the movie that are sensory and wordless are as rapturous (very much in tone poem mode) as anything every seen on the screen, and this kind of visual cinema, where narrative is more of a hinderance than a benefit, is Avatar’s most extraordinary quality and it’s true selling point.  It’s true that Cameron keeps insisting that the film needs to tie together plot strands, but this was unecessary, if not particularly harmful.  In this sense, it’s to be noted here that some critics have taken issue with the pedestrian nature of a dialogue, a point I reject in the name of cinematic purity.  Avatar is neither a satiric comedy nor a trenchant stage drama.  Characters and words tell the story, but they are pawns to purvey cinematic expression.  Those who are awed by and feel the film’s magic won’t feel the simplistic dialogue which seems to combine New Age expression and macho agression, is either abnormal or detrimental.  That said, it’s abundantly clear that Cameron’s storytelling prowess widely trumps his talents as a writer of prose.

    But it all comes down to the wonderment and astounding visual tapestries, accentuated by the metamorphosis of a character who sees the inherent beauty in a culture ravaged by war, internal strife and foreign invasion.  This creates in the viewer an emotion so powerful that it defies description.  It’s almost like you found some clues to the meaning of life.  But short of those lofty aspersions, the film raises questions of mortality and existence (much in the style of Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain- a giant willow tree holding the meaning of life for all living things echoes the Tree of Life in Aronofsky’s film) and with a ruminative flow that recalls Terrence Malick) that turn a futuristic planetary action thriller into a far more profound philosophical experience.  The blend of mysticism and environmentalism evident in Avatar also suggests Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, whose influence might also be discerned in the scenes of awe and wonderment set in the centerpiece forest sequences.

     The film’s veteran composer James Horner, borrows heavily on the themes he wrote for his Civil War epic, Glory (1989), especially the flying sequences in the middle, but he still gains some rapturous mileage from the most lyrical passages which are musically altered.  It’s at times thunderously bombastic, but it always seems to provide the perfect aural accompaniment with the scenes it underlines.  Horner was never a subtle composer, but for Avatar his strengths are magnified, and while its not a candidate for one of the great scores, its at least the best he’s done for Cameron.

     Sigourney Weaver, whose death scene is one of the film’s most poignant moments, brings her experience with Cameron in a confident, take-charge portrayal as Dr. Grace Augustine that serves as a foil to the shamelessly bigoted role of Quaritch, played by an all-too-human Stephen Lang.  Givanni Ribisi, perhaps the least impressive of the fully live-action leads is basically a symbol.  As Skully and as Neytiri, Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana bring the vital contradictions to characters that must define so much more than just domestic conflicts but the fate of a race and of the world they inhabit.  As such they give striking performances.

     But in the end, it’s Cameron and his cinematographer, Mauro Fiore, that bring this phantasmogoric world of visual splendor to glorious fruition.  The work is so consistently magnificent, so suggestive, so ruminative and simultaneously realistic and expressionistic that is raises the bar for what now can be created with technology, and makes Avatar a cinematic masterpiece.

Final Rating:  *****  (highest rating)

Note:  I saw ‘Avatar’ with Lucille and the kids on Sunday afternoon at the Edgewater multiplex in 2D.  Everyone liked it, but to varying degrees.  I plan to see the 3D version on Tuesday night at the same theatre with Dennis Polifroni.