Visually stunning sentimental drivel

Rating: 4/10 (6 January 2011)

It has to be said that if you've seen Dances With Wolves or any of the other pseudo-humanistic, post-hippy films in which man learns better ways via the good offices of 'natives' far more in tune with nature and that his way of life isn't everything, the story in Avatar is not going to surprise you. Best stick to the visuals, which are stunning. James Cameron might be all clichéd thumbs when it comes to telling a human story, but with his creation of the planet Pandora, he has come up with an imaginative alternative to Mother Earth. But is that enough to sustain the movie? No, not really. The plot is very straightforward – man needs to get his greedy mitts on a mineral (called, believe it or not 'unobtainium' – is that some kind of in-joke?) which exists on the planet Pandora, but that planet's indigenous people, a blue-skinned race who are 'in tune with nature' are naturally not too chuffed about the rape of their planet. Throw in a couple of extremely bad guys – the military man and the corporate man who will stop at nothing, not even genocide, to get the stuff they need - and the film is set up for a pretty conventional trajectory. Then there's a paraplegic marine who starts out as being more aligned to the bad guys, but is finally won over to the right path by the love of a good woman, and so the cast of two-dimensional characters is almost complete. Almost, because there is also the anthropologist who wants to find out more about the blue-skinned 'natives'. Much of the film is taken up with the marine/native hybrid undergoing rites of passage and it is more or less a sentimental smooze fest, great if that's your bag, not so great if, like me, it makes you all a bit queasy. Naturally, this being the kind of 'nature knows best and we had better listen to her voice' tract, there is wall-to-wall music which is equally as sentimental. So, to coin a phrase, there's rather less to Avatar than meets the eye. Granted the stunning recreation of an alternative planet – stunning even if like me you watch the DVD on a laptop and don't get to enjoy the full 3D experience – goes a long way to making Avatar something of a standout production, but even that can only take you so far. So far, so Hollywood. So far, a great one for Saturday night with a bag full of popcorn and lots of super-stunning visuals. But, given the obvious allusions made by Cameron and his producers, allusions to the Vietnam War, the cultures of the African people, the Native American tribes who also attempted to resist the encroachment of 19th-century 'sky people' – land rather than unobtainium was their prize - and given the allusions to the 'war on terror', I feel I might be allowed to take my cue and add a few, rather more pointed, comments. The real story of the Native American fightback ended in outright tragedy for them all. Several millions were killed, all of them were displaced and dispossessed, and for many the result of white man's greed is misery, alcoholisms and perpetual unemployment. Cameron's Avatar has the obligatory feelgood happy ending, but the conclusion of the Native Americans' fightback was anything but a happy ending. And before anyone thinks this review has developed into some kind of anti-U.S. rant, let me add that the French, Brits, Dutch, Germans, Spanish, Portuguese adventurers who scoured the world and destroyed peoples in their insatiable search for minerals and wealth were equally as nasty. And to add insult to injury they all insisted, po-faced, that they were trying to bring 'civilisation' to 'savages'. In the light of that do Cameron and his producers really think that a multi-billion piece of what is at the end of the day 24-carat sentimental feelgood drivel can make up for what was done to those several million Native Americans and other indigenous people? I rather think not. But back to the film: as standard Hollywood stuff, Avatar has what it takes, and will do just fine if that's what you like. Best not to take it in the lightest bit seriously, however.