Horrific, Gorgeous And Troubling

The sure-to-be-blockbuster film, “Avatar,â€� playing across the country, was made for 3D and Imax viewing.  Using live action, animation, computer-generated images, motion-capture — and God knows what else dreamed up by the 2,000 workers associated with the film — director James Cameron has created an extra-terrestrial world of surpassing beauty.

   Unhappily, he has also created a story (Cameron wrote the screenplay, too) of surpassing banality, a plodding parable of imperialist greed and aggression.

   The movie takes place on Pandora, a distant moon, where American companies and their hired  security force support mining unobtanium — yes, unobtanium, a precious mineral that does something (we’re never told what).  A native tribe, the Na’vi, lives in a giant tree over the largest deposit of the mineral on Pandora. They are at one with nature (remind you of an American Indian tribe starting with “Nâ€�?) and don’t want to move away from their tree home to make way for the giant mining machines.

   The grasping American consortium has allowed well-intentioned, tough-talking scientist Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver, always a class act) to infiltrate the Na’vi using avatars to gain the tribe’s confidence and learn what it will take to move them away from their tree home.  (Grace has the only sprightly, interesting dialogue in the film.  Maybe Weaver wrote it herself.)

   And what is an avatar?  In Hindu mythology, it is a god who descends to earth and takes human form. In computerland, it’s an icon that represents a person in virtual reality or cyberspace. And in Cameron mythology, it’s a manufactured body that is controlled remotely by a real human being’s brain waves. Grace’s avatars are created from recombinant DNA — part human, part Na’vi — and look like the Na’vi:  Giacometti tall and slender with feline yellow eyes and pointed ears and long, prehensile tails. They are quick and preternaturally agile.

   Grace’s latest avatar-controller is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), an ex-Marine unable to use his legs and confined to a wheelchair.  He becomes the main link between the Americans and the Na’vi and the driver of the story.  

   Cameron has basically divided the movie into three sections. The first is an explication of story, location, characters. The second — and happily, the longest — is Jake’s (and our) introduction to Pandora’s sublime scenery, fanciful and often terrifying creatures, the Na’vi and their ways and the Na’vi princess Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who becomes — surprise — Jake’s true love. (Yes, they mate, but off-camera. There is no heat in this love story.  Don’t expect Winslet and DiCaprio.)  This section is often lyrical, always beautiful, and sweeps you into Cameron’s amazing visual imagination.

   Then, unfortunately, comes part three — a long, horrific recreation of the Vietnam war, complete with napalm, Agent Orange and helicopter gunships and led by Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) in an excellent caricature of Robert Duval’s Col. Kilgore.  (Ever see “Apocalypse Now?â€�) It gives the movie a gigantic adrenalin rush, but you can hardly wait —but wait you do — for it to end.  And it does give Cameron a final coup, a near resurrection scene complete with chanting, incantations and little, flying, sparkly creatures.

   “Avatarâ€� is a visually gorgeous film, unlike any other.  It is also an encyclopedia of film references (“Dances With Wolves,â€� “Tarzan,â€� “Frankenstein,â€� “Green Mansions,â€� “300,â€� etc., etc. etc.) and stereotypical characters (Jake, the hero on quest; Quaritch, male aggression personified.) Dialogue is never original, frequently comedic.  And cliché abounds:  every soldier is muscle bound; Col. Quaritch is so pumped up (and Lang is 59) he could be advertising steroids.

   So why do I intend to see it again, this time in Imax or 3D?  Because I am persuaded that only in those processes can Cameron’s vision of Pandora truly bloom and enchant, and I want to experience that enchantment as he intended.  I may not even notice the sillium of the story.

     “Avatarâ€� is playing at The Moviehouse in Milerton. It is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned.) Guns, explosions, death, despair.