AVATAR [2009] review

I was fated to see AVATAR alone.  I know this now.  AVATAR is a powerful environmental message exactly when the human race needs it.  It is a move that rivals the epic NAUSICAA in its organic environmental message.  It is an expression of imagination and wonder far, far greater than any movie I can remember that tried to do so.  The thing that made me most skeptical of the movie, its CGI characters, were in reality its greatest asset.  Human actors could not replicate the adaptation and harmony with the environment that the Na’vi had.  The moistness in their eyes illustrated their love for there world.  AVATAR IS A MASTERPIECE film by James Cameron.

AVATAR is the best movie I have seen in 2009, and not just one of the best movies I have seen this decade, but one of the very top of all time.  The movie, for me, on a personal level, is a validation.  It is an eye opening example of how WRONG modern human society is.  The symptoms of the wrongness of modern human society have never been more vivid for me:  hunger, homelessness, obesity, the left out, the lack of purpose to life and being.

The world James Cameron has shown us that came direct from his own imagination is the natural order of the Universe.  I just cannot believe humans are indigenous to Earth.  I cannot.  Something on this planet is not indigenous and has caused its great imbalance and its slow death.  If it is not humans, then it is something else, because everywhere Nature exists without human interference, it exists in perfect balance.  Perhaps it is just western culture that is not indigenous to Earth?

AVATAR’s other presumed weakness was in its story, which is in essence a basic learn the culture with ulterior motives, with the main character eventually going native and trying to save what he was initially sent to destroy.  The difference is that AVATAR tells this story extremely well, with vivid strokes.  I will repeat the word vivid in this review many times because the world of Pandora is an entirely vivid ecosystem of bioluminescence and interconnectedness.  It is the only such world I have ever seen on screen that rivals, if not surpasses, the worlds Miyazaki has created.

The story:  a corporation needs a very rare ore that is plentiful on Pandora.  The military is sent in to mine it.  This is not done in a gentle way and the native people, the Na’vi, resist to their own peril.  Jake Sully is sent in via a Na’vi body, an avatar as they call it, to do recon on their culture so that the military can more easily eliminate them.  The wonders of the Na’vi culture and environment that Jake learns of we also feel.  AVATAR is a very visceral movie.

I cannot stop thinking about the method with which the Na’vi connect and communicate with the creatures of their world and the world itself.  It is a stroke of genius on Cameron’s part I believe.  It is used to great effect in many parts of the movie.

I thought the trailers for AVATAR portrayed it only as a video game looking war movie.  If those trailers are stopping you from seeing AVATAR, as they almost stopped me, pay them no worry.  This is an environmentalists movie.  An organic movie.  A movie that shows the significance of culture, and the values that come from sharing a valid culture.  The validity of the Na’vi culture stems from the balance with which they live in their surroundings.

I was really moved by the acting as well.  Sam Worthington, who plays Jake, deserves an Oscar nomination, as does the actress Zoe Saldana, who plays the female lead, Neytiri, one of the most beautiful and fierce characters in film history.  The dialogue was very good as well, very real.

Then there are the million small touches in the film, like taking a drink from a plant leaf, or saying a prayer for a creature that was unnecessarily slain, that enhance and enrich the world being created on the screen.

I will be thinking of AVATAR long after tonight.  I hope this movie reaches a wide audience and imprints on them the emptiness of human society today.  No one in the theater I saw the movie in was as moved as I was though.  As the final credit rolled and the screen went dark, and the house lights came up, I rose from my seat and surveyed a completely empty theater.  Only I had shown all due respect.  This was not the first time it has happened.

I hope I dream of the world of Pandora and of AVATAR tonight.

UPDATE:  Sunday December 20, 2009

It has now been a full 48 hours since seeing AVATAR and I still think about it all the time.  The first night after seeing it I dreamt about it.  21st Century Earth life grows increasingly unpalatable by the moment with its secular, sacred-less, culture-less crashing through the time line.

The thing I cannot stop thinking about most is how their footprints glowed while walking along the massive tree branches, high above.