A Work of Astounding Beauty

Rating: 9/10 (30 December 2009)

It's been a long time since I've found myself so utterly immersed in the fictional world created by a film as I was in the one brought to life in James Cameron's astounding "Avatar." His new film does what "Star Wars" did way back in 1977: it translates in visual terms the detailed imaginings existing solely in the head of a geek filmmaker. While watching "Avatar," I forgot that any other world, including the one I live in, existed.
And the 3D gimmick is only partially responsible for that. I'd like to see the film again without the distraction of 3D, because I think it would hold up just as well. James Cameron is unpardonably clunky when it comes to narrative storytelling, but as a director of action and movement, practically no one can touch him when he's at the top of his game, and you don't need 3D to appreciate that.
"Avatar" has the less welcome Cameron trademarks, the ones that ran amuk in "Titanic" and killed the non-action portion of that film. He yields his writer's pen like a sledgehammer, and you'd have to be a moron to miss the points he makes in this film about environmentalism, cultural understanding and the global community. And don't even get me started on his villains, in this film portrayed as corporate and military goons in the kinds of gross caricatures Stanley Kubrick lampooned back in his "Dr. Stragelove" days. But the vast majority of the film is told in the language of images rather than words, and it's easy to overlook the film's flaws and be instead transported by its beauty.
Sam Worthington, Zoe Caldana and Sigourney Weaver ground the film with terrific performances, and I've never seen motion capture effects work better than they do here. It was frequently hard to remember that we were looking at partially computer generated images and not actors in body makeup.
This is one movie that for once is deserving of its hype.
Grade: A