Imagination at Work

Rating: 8/10 (30 December 2009)

I love movies. I love being transported to another place through another person's artistic expression. Avatar, took me somewhere else. I often try to think like a child. Children can look at an ordinary object, a toy car, and create their own world, with their own rules. Almost no adults, including myself, can do that. This movie literally freed my mind. This line describes the movie well: "Your imagination, like a child, will explode with unrestrained possibilities for adventure." I long for the return of my imagination. Picasso said: "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist when we grow up." This is true on many levels, Picasso, one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, understood that well. Anyway, back to the movie.
Pandora is so full of imagination, one of our first views of it is at night. Jake's torch is extinguished and the planet comes alive. Life is everywhere to touch (with the 3D technology it's right in my face). Ever since I saw this movie several days ago I've wanted to leap on the back of a brightly colored bird and fly around my home, calling out to my brothers and sisters. I want to feel the thrill of climbing a mountain that is not rooted in the ground. The rush of adrenaline that comes with a life-and-death struggle with the oldest forces of nature. My favorite story of all time is the Lord of the Rings and I see much of that story here. The heart of it is the trees. Tolkien loved trees and made them characters. "Trees that could whisper, talk to each other...even move!" This movie talks about the trees communicating back and forth to each other with more connections between each other than a human brain. In Tolkien's myth the elves could talk to the trees and loved the trees, much like the Na'vi. Both the elves and the Na'vi lived intertwined with nature and amongst it.
I loved this movie, not because of the themes (although the theme is another interesting conversation I would love to have), the characters, or the plot, but because of the life. A world lush with color and sound. Avatar is a movie that opens your mind, that makes you dare to think outside of the world that we live in. I pause from typing at my computer here, close my eyes, and dream. I dream of flying (opening lines/scene of the movie) uninhibitedly over the jungle, the air on my face, and the smell of that which is unknown. I am a child again.