A beautiful, innovative slog: revisiting “Avatar”

An hour in and I have to take a break. Cameron’s opus is more tedious than I remembered - and more gorgeous and more frustrating than I care to endure. Frankly, this is like watching a remarkable, beautiful masterpiece of emptiness. That may not be as dismissive as it sounds. 

To be sure, I don’t disagree with Cameron’s message throughout the film; a parable for how our exploitation of resources and oppression, if not outright destruction of indigenous peoples to obtain these resources (and the capitalist drivers behind that destruction) has my full support. But there is no reason why the parable has to last almost three hours. 

The wonderment of the effects does not let up. The 3-D seems better resolved with this rerelease and the CGI still works (except for a slight “uncanny valley” not in eyes or facial expression, but in limb articulation; I want to revisit that). However, as before, when I and untold millions saw it the first time might have felt with me; the visuals are almost overwhelming. And here is the first element of frustration.

Cameron has built one of the most complete Otherworlds in cinema. I want to live there; I would love a film just on the Na’vi (which may be what the sequel might be about?), but at the same time, the visuals are more interesting than the figure at the center of the film. Jake Sully is a paraplegic ex-Marine given a chance to fill in for his deceased brother, the PhD who was originally supposed to assume an “avatar” to explore and communicate with the Na’vi to “win their confidence” so the military-industrial complex can extract the vast reserves of Unobtainium (sigh) that coincidentally just happen to be found under the Sacred Tree. 

Jake is separated from his clutch of scientist explorers, Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver, just about giving a masterclass in how to act with a minimal character) and Dr. Norm Spellman (a game Joel David Moore) and winds up meeting Nyetri (Zoe Saldana, see also Sigourney Weaver) and is touched by the pure spirits in a sign that he is somehow significant to the Na’vi. If you’ve seen the movie, you know what happens next; if not, the main conflict is that Jake is (more or less) welcomed into the Na’vi community but is also expected to pass what he learns about them to the evil Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang chewing scenery beautifully, because what else are you going to do when your character has all the subtlety of Snidely Whiplash? Look that reference up, children).

Quaritch, of course, is a REAL MAN; the scientists are “limp dicks” and the Na’vi are savages only fit for subjugation or eradication. Giovanni Ribisi is on hand as the corporate martinette who is determined to get the Unobtainium by whatever means available for all that wonderful mo-nay. All of this writ large and as a fable, that’s fine. As a film, it’s just bludgeoning and repetitive. 

I will probably go pee and return to the flick in a bit, but so much is coming back to me and I remember what it is; frustration that this amazing world and the human contact with it resulted in such a long, drawn-out, often boring piece of work. 

Mauro Fiore’s remarkable cinematography feels like it is almost at war with the ennui or maybe fatigue that sets in repeatedly when Worthington’s Sully, Lang’s Quaritch, and Ribisi’s twerp share the screen. It’s not the actor’s faults; the dialog is wooden and so arch that it’s difficult not to just say, “yeah, I get it, can we move along now?”

Fiore and the SFX crews certainly put meat onto Cameron’s vision, but lordy there’s not enough of a story here to justify a bloated runtime. Mythopoeic in potentia, though. I get why Cameron may want to explore what he has going here, but if the successive entries are as long as this one, I feel like I’ll have to work out to make it through the endurance run.

There are also moments that are genuinely moving. Cameron capitalizes on the analogies and parallels that come with imperialist designs, and the exploitation and debasement (both of the colonizer and the colonized); but he is also able to make some things ring more true despite the awful, awful dialog (“It is hard to teach someone whose cup is full” is fortunately countered by “My cup’s empty; just as Dr. Augustine”). Therein lies the rub.

As a writer, he is decidedly hit or miss. Much of his work suffers from jamming way too much in there. “The Terminator”, “Aliens”, and “True Lies” may his most to the point and economical scripts. “Titanic” I refuse to spend more words on, but even “Terminator 2” is overlong. His ear for dialog is considerably better than, say, George Lucas, but that’s a low bar. And to be fair, even if many of his characters all seem to speak with the same cadence, he does have a sense of humor. Sadly, much of that is lacking in “Avatar.” It is a deadly earnest movie and that is precisely what weighs it down. (The same problems plagued “Titanic” and sank it more than the iceberg…dang, spent more words on it.)

It is rare that I walk out on a film and to be sure, I’m doing it now and I feel like I’ve wasted too much money on a film I’m barely watching. However, I felt the same way thirteen years ago; I could have walked out then, taken a lap or three, come back to it and lost nothing of the thrust of the film. 

Now having said all this, I am going to confess and contradict myself to some degree. I do think Cameron’s opus is visionary in the deepest sense of the word. I do believe that even if it is not a great film, it has moments of greatness in it. If it is a slog (and it is), I think it is worth a revisit as pure spectacle and even - and this is where I contradict myself - to see if what Cameron’s doing really hasn’t been done before and I do not mean technically.

“Avatar” was reviewed more than a couple of times as “Dances with Rules” in outer space. Fair enough, but I think Cameron’s ballsiness is banking on telling an allegory that most people don’t want to hear. Yes, this has been done before, but not with the immense 21st century whiz-bang deployed here. As much as the story drags, the 3-D supports it and provides a visceral framework onto which is grafted a very compelling story.

The pacing does not quite defeat the import of what Cameron is trying to say. The earnestness is almost endearing. I can even live with watching actors trying to convey genuinely emotional connections despite being mostly CG generated characters. In this, Cameron - like Peter Jackson before him - showed that when effects are serving the story and the characters, the visuals are not so invasive or dissociative. Gollum is a tour de force of pathos and greed and shades of feelings; the Na’vi throughout “Avatar” are wonders of ranges. Some are just plain bad acting; others (Saldana and C.C.H. Pounder, for instance) really embody what they are about and feel fully realized (also, Weaver, Moore, and in some moments, Worthington). 

I give Cameron credit for his ambition and his heart is in the right place. I even feel like that my feelings about the movie’s aside, this is an important film and will likely hold its place in cinematic history. I do think it is overrated but not for the reasons some would think. It does advance the technology of how 3-D is imaged and pushed CG rendering farther along than anyone could in 2009 could imagine; but I do think that it might one of the more successful “message” movies of the 21st century. If the substantial fat had been trimmed, it would stand as a full classic for me. 

I think I can go back in the theater now. I just made my own edit of the film.