astonishing visuals overcome polemics

Rating: 8/10 (26 January 2010)

"Avatar" is James Cameron's $237 million parable on the evils of imperialism, corporatism and Manifest Destiny.
The time is 2154, the place an earthlike moon called Pandora, where an American company has set up a major mining operation to extract a precious mineral - presumably an energy source - from beneath the planetoid's lush, verdant surface. The problem is that one of the richest veins lies directly under a massive tree that holds great spiritual significance for the indigenous folk who live there - a race of nine-foot-tall, blue-complexioned natives called the Na'vi who dwell in the forest, wield old-fashioned bows-and-arrows, fly around on giant pterodactyl-type birds, and have a strong pantheistic connection with the world around them.
As the story begins, it is clear that, thus far, the earthlings have had very limited success in winning over the Na'vi through such outreach efforts as building them schools and teaching them English. Fortunately, a group of scientists have found a way to create facsimiles of the Na'vi - called Avatars - into which a human mind can be transported while the original body remains behind in a state of suspended animation. Enter Jake Sully, a young marine who's lost the use of his legs in battle and now has been chosen to enter into an avatar so he can learn more about the Na'vi by living amongst them in the hopes of eventually winning them over to the Americans' side. Unfortunately, not everyone is as concerned with making nice with the Na'vi as is Grace Augustine, the humanistic biologist who heads up the research, and Jake soon discovers that the more he comes to feel like a Na'vi himself, the more he is expected to spy on and then betray his new-found compatriots in the earthlings' cause. Jake's gradual transition from cocky, human-centric warrior to nature-loving ersatz-alien provides the dramatic and thematic arc of the film.
The parallels between the conflict in "Avatar" and America's involvement in the Iraq war are never far from Cameron's mind and the movie suffers a bit for it (ironically, "Avatar" is a far more overtly political film than "The Hurt Locker" which is actually SET in Iraq). I suspect that, had he wanted to, Cameron could probably have gotten his point across without taking a narrative sledgehammer to the audience. Heck, there's even a reference to "shock and awe" as the Americans gear up for battle, just in case you missed the inference. That being said, "Avatar" is enough of a technical triumph to overcome its occasional heavy-handed polemical tendencies and to successfully take us to a place we've never been before.
Through the wizardry of computer-generated 3-D special effects, Cameron has created a magical world of shimmering forests, floating mountains, and strange and exotic flora and fauna - a place where love can convincingly flourish between creatures from alien worlds and alien species. In fact, the romance between Jake and a female Na'vi who teaches him the ways of her people - an even more unlikely coupling than Rose and Jack in "Titanic" - has something of a "New World" quality about it. And, indeed, Cameron's near-worshipful attitude towards nature here echoes Terrance Malick's work in that earlier film. Actually, that seems a particularly appropriate reference point given that "Avatar" can easily be viewed as an allegory of the European white man's conquest of the American continent and the genocide perpetrated on the native population that played such a crucial role in bringing that outcome about. The look of the movie is something akin to a John Howe painting done in bold florescent colors and placed under a black light.
Of the performers, it's frankly a little hard to evaluate fully Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana's work in this film since clearly much of what appears on screen is the product of CGI manipulation and enhancement. But they're both certainly adequate to the task they've been called upon to fulfill, and Sigourney Weaver as Grace and Giovanni Ribisi as the corporate administrator for the mine - and the movie's arch villain - turn in genuinely powerful performances. And once again, as with "Titanic," James Horner provides a soaring power-ballad to help transition the audience out of the theater and back into the real world.
Almost inevitably, perhaps, "Avatar" is one of those movies wherein the storyline is bound to become at least partially subsumed by the special effects. But, as he did with "Titanic" - though to a somewhat lesser extent in this case - Cameron proves that he is capable of finding that happy medium between the two sides better than most.