Life With….

I have freely admitted that I don’t go to movie theaters often, it just doesn’t’ occur to me often. But there are some movies that lose something if they are not seen on the big screen – and Avatar appeared to be one of them.   More importantly, it was snowy, gloomy, cold, and I felt stuck in my job hunt and needed to clear my head, my normal way to go clear it walking was impossible due to Algy and my shared hatred of being cold.

The only other movie I was seriously considering was the princess and the frog, which I do want to, see, but should tell you something about my mood – I wanted to escape into a realty rather then examine my current one.  (I can’t seem to find Nine around here, was not up for Gone With the Wind which is playing at the art house near me, I want to see Invictus but it did not scream escape etc; I will probably see Sherlock Holmes, and possibly others soon as well).  So Avatar it was.

First the bad.  James Cameron should not write his own scripts.  He has a gift for imaginative stories, but some of the lines were so awful that I was laughing at their ridiculousness - and this was hard to do, as the movie was captivating.  It reminded me of watching Pride and Prejudice with Kiera Knightly when my whole family was in hysterics over the ending, and a few other scenes that portrayed Darcy as a romantic hero out of a romance novel, that was utterly unnecessary, it also reminded me of why I hated Titanic even beyond the schmaltziness.  Secondly it was both a little long and a little short – I was questioning at times why Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) was accepted so quickly by the blue Na’vi into a role of trust and initiated as one of their own so quickly.  And Many characters - such as Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) and the PHd assitants to  Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) were caricatures and one-dimensional and could have used some backstory and fleshing out.

But these flaws feel minor – Cameron has done something magical.  He has allowed us to believe in, and experience in full depth a world with flying creatures, blue people, and floating mountains.   A fantastical world of beauty, color, depth and color, filled with captivating creatures and emotional connections that you want to continue to explore.  Watching it in digital 3-d (a new experience for me, and thankfully there were very few moments where it felt like things were coming out of the screen; it was more like  watching something on a stage then watching a flat screen due to the three dimensions) gave the sets and characters depth and proportionality, and it was truly amazing.  Many times, the CGI was so real that it was easy to forget that it was not digitized and played with backdrop (a la Lord of the Rings) but all shot with this new technology and created graphics.  Even the blue people looked realistic.   It was like seeing a child hood story come to life.   While the story followed a predictable, time-tested formula, and those work for a reason, and it did work here.

The other thing that truly stunned me was the not hidden nature of the politics of the movie.  The good guys are environmentalists (both human and na’vi), scientists, who are labeled tree-huggers.  They eat meat, but apologize to those they kill and hope that they join the scared Tree and thus rejoin the energy of the ancestors and planet in mother earth.   The bad guys are Marines (with one notable exception) and Corporate interests, who literally lead a pre-emptive war, and call it a preventive terrorist active to prevent further terror.  Corporations and the military, we are told, have destroyed all that is green Earth, and will, because we are selfish creatures do the same to Pandora.

In sharp contrast to this I recently saw the Danish movie Brothers, which was remade this year Toby Maguire and Jake Glena.  The subtlety of its characterizations, not to mention its politics, made it a gripping family drama and a believable and engrossing story.  I loved this movie, it had me crying in places, but I doubt that one second of the movie will stay with me as long as some of the imagery from Avatar – it was a door into the imagination that succeeded.  I would encourage everyone to see it – and Fox News agrees (about the politics too) and we all know they are the cultural arbiters of the day.

All text and copyrights preserved by the author 02csb For more information visit http://www.peebesalgy.com Courtney Brown

Create Your Badge  All text and copyrights preserved by the author for words and original pictures and may not be used without author's permission. For more information visit http://www.peebesalgy.com Follow me on Twitter @ http://twitter.com/peebesalgy or contact me directly through http://www.peebesalgy.com/blog/contact-me/ Courtney Brown | Create Your Badge