In defense of Avatar... 2

David Brisbin said...

Dear Siobahn,

In the aftermath of seeing Avatar, plenty has been bugging me too. Further, point by point, almost everything you say strikes me as pretty valid. And yet, I disagree. I think it is a good movie. Not sure I can piece it all together as elegantly as do you -- but here’s a small stack of stones which I think you’ve left unturned, or at least could be flipped over a bit further......

1.) FIRST -- THE BIG MYSTERY. Where you describe the environmental strand as lacking any self reflection, I saw it as a diversionary tactic. Murky, yes. Sloppy even. Worse still, it was accompanied by appalling ‘noble savage’ and ‘colonial’ implications, especially in the cheesy denoument. BUT, I think these predictable and sappy elements were deliberate and worked as cover for the shocker..... 
Did you see how thoroughly and completely this movie CONDEMNED the military industrial complex of the American Corporate capitalist model of the first decade of the 21st century as STUPID, DESTRUCTIVE, AND NEEDING TO BE FOUGHT OFF... even if you have to do it with sticks, rocks, and pterodactyls? I could hear Eisenhower cheering from his grave! Deeply mysterious to me how a guy working on Rupert Murdoch’s dime got away with that? What other POWERFUL voices on the planet (hello Obama) will actually speak such critique clearly and loudy in the mass media during this decade??? Do you realize that in recent years while Blair/Brown and Harper and Obama and Berlusconi continued screeching at the top of their lungs that Corporate capitalism is the only way and must not be questioned, that the military is always right, War must be pursued, Black Prisons must be kept locked and hidden, Blackwater must funded and immune and all the documentation must be secret (exactly Col. Quaritch would say) -- that James Cameron was looking over the should of 1000 people digitizing the doom of such a plan! That, it seems to me, is ‘thinking about the political implications’. WOW! That, in my opinion, is a mark Tarantino has NEVER hit. Sure there are some big (kitsch and melodramatic of course) movies in recent decades that poke the eye of ‘the man’. But this one was EXPLICIT.
[] Explicit in the design -- military craft all unfamiliar vehicles, but would anyone even look twice if they landed at Bagram Air Field?
[] Explicit in the portrayal of hierarchy -- note that Jake clings to / accepts the patterns of hierarchy laid out by Col. Quaritch for so long that it makes Jake seem stupid. Interesting point.
[] Explicit in the storytelling -- note how Quaritch factors in the smart scientific female into his plan...by running roughshod around her if she is an irrelevant nuisance. He knows that she will be made redundant, passively, accidentally, or by his command. The important thing is that Cameron wasn't doing this under the cloak of indie filmmaking and salivating for Indie spirit prizes -- he was delivering kitsch for the mall!!!

2.) If this level of actual political critique were to show up in the next gen of 3-D tentpole movies I think it would be amazingly interesting. But I would be surprised. In fact, I am just as despondent about where this leads as you are, Siobahn, though I suppose it is for different reasons. I think is has to get worse before it gets better because....

3.) If permitted to update TSElliot?: 
“good poets borrow, great poets steal; working movie directors borrow, good movie directors steal BUT RECITE IN THEIR OWN VOICE.” Movies cost too much. Big palette movies cost way, way, way too much. Big Special Effects movie rarely achieve a coherence of vision ( let alone any meaning) because the directors can’t juggle the complexity of the filmmaking ( no matter how many smarty-pants types work for them) while negotiating the money realities of corporate production. I am not personally dazzled by the mere technical delivery of Avatar (though it is impressive.) I am dazzled by the fact that this technical proficiency is marshaled with superb coherence to itself AND to its subject matter. The completeness of the vision, the mastery of precise visual detail to aid the story telling, the fact that the greatest tech trick of the show precisely matches the key tech trick of the plot, the rendering of spectacle as palpable..... That is auteur filmmaking. A purely James Cameron recitation.

4.) Might McLuhan move in with Sontag thus?: 
“MOVIES OF SCALE INEVITABLY reaffirm rather than challenge the collective norm, AND FUNCTION as a source of sheer entertainment ALLEVIATING THE VAST PAYING PUBLIC FROM THE BURDENS of elevated perception generated by high art.” There are myriad examples of film-making which do blatantly challenge the collective norm -- but are therefore invisible. ( For example the prison guard sequence in Rithy Panh’s “S-21 The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine”..... as brilliant as the highest of high art, but I would wager no one reading this has ever even heard of it. ) Continuing with pseudo Susan: “ BIg MOVIES cannot be conceived as distinct from the dynamics of power in a given society IN THAT THE EXPENDTIRUE OF $300,000,000 will always describe both objects and a way of life brought on by the urbanization and mass-production of the INFORMATION revolution” Really, what could anyone expect from Twentieth Century Fox Studios and the director of Titanic other than kitsch!!! The miracle is when kitsch sells and critiques simultaneously.

5.) Finally , in response to the critic pimping the Ozu festival in the Guardian on the coat-tails of Avatar.... I ltreasure Ozu. I know at least 8 of his films quite well and have seen many more. But comparing him to Cameron is like condemning Beethoven’s 9th or Wagner’s Parsifal on the basis of chamber music. I am not equating Cameron to Beethoven by any means -- but I strongly protest film-making comparisons with no sense of scale. IF, perchance, you wanted to stick with old Japanese masters but compare efforts to work at a great scale and be vocal about political meaning, I would propose Imamura’s ‘Black Rain’, or Mizoguchi’s ‘Ugetsu monogatari’. (Neither one made a billion dollars.)

Posted via web from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales