Mawgablog

Jakesully prepares to learn a new trade

I saw the film Avatar a couple of weeks ago. It was the full-fat, 3D,  Imax experience, and I have to say, I really loved it. There’s no point in me going over the ins and outs of the plot and so on just now, as that’s been far better documented elsewhere.

But something’s been niggling me. There’s a lot of chat about Cameron and his ability to write a script. Now, I actually have an admiration for the way he writes a script. He doesn’t bother with any nuance and suggestion and subtlety. He explains the premise of the movie in almost laughable detail for quite a good stretch of the film’s opening moments. I say laughable because he all but cuts away to himself and says, “dear viewers, this movie is about a planet FAR. FAR AWAY, in the FUTURE, where they have to mine a thing called … UNOBTAINIUM … because it’s hard to get, on EARTH. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

Stunning effects, excellent film making, but are the Na'vi 'our' friends?

I kind of admire that. He just says it. He just comes out and says, this is a blockbuster and a lot of people who go to see a blockbuster aren’t there for nuanced dialogue and multi-faceted characters basing their lives on gossamer dividing lines between right and wrong, shade and light, what is and what might be. They want good guys and bad guys, and they want to know what the hell’s going on right away. No nudging the guy in the seat next door going, who’s that?!

There’s no Charlie Kaufman convolution here, I assure you.

So, I have no problems with the plot. Except one thing. And it’s a big one thing.

People talk about this movie like it’s of this incredibly deep statement about ecology and the Earth’s natural resources, not to mention the depredations of humankind in its quest to make a buck.

But it shouldn’t be about that, not as far as I’m concerned. It should be about our depredations. It should say to us, sitting in the audience: you are the reason this is all set to happen in the future, and I don’t think it does that. It’s all very removed from who we are, sitting in the audience. There’s no sense that in our quest for iPhones and low-fat yoghurt, someone else has to lose out, whether it’s for precious minerals being mined in central Africa, which has its part to play in much of the conflict on the border between Rwanda and DR Congo – so called tribal conflict has economic cause – or the ripping up tropical rain forest to grow palm oil.

Col Miles Quaritch (played by Stephen Lang) is, technically, our guy on Pandora

I had this thought. There is a character, the bad guy, the military guy, who’s called Colonel Quaritch. Now, his job is to eradicate the big blue humanoids on Pandora, the Na’vi.

Quaritch is actually our guy. He’s our hero. He’s the guy who clears rainforests of indigenous people, of inhabitants that would use all that precious land for whatever they’d like, often precious nothing at all. He’s the western pioneers that cleared America of its indigenous people, or who made it safe for Australian settlement, or who keep the rainforest away from lovely Chilean vineyards, or, again, ensure palm oil from Borneo’s jungles. He will fight the fight to drill Alaska. He’s our guy.

We never get a sense of this from the movie. We leave feeling good that Quaritch gets his comeuppance at the end of the movie. But honestly, in the real world we’d be far more ambivalent about a group of indigenous people taking on the might of the (American) military, for our own reasons. It would be a split decision, in essence, among the cinema audience. We’re not situated within the debate. We’re not within the film. We’re outside looking in. We’re blameless when we should be censured. We’re blameworthy.

How would Cameron do that? I’m not sure. Perhaps merely by mentioning what Unobtanium might be used for? Who can say? It’s a parable, sure, but as such, as a warning, I’m not sure it quite delivers. As a fabulous movie, it certainly does. It’s spectacle. It’s a feat of technology.

But the social comment that is supposed rings hollow. I’m not entirely sure Cameron is knows what he wants to say about the ecology, if anything at all. I’m uncertain that he’s not just paying lip service to the issue, essentially. That’s sort of a shame. Then again, it’s not necessarily his place to do that. His place is to make an action movie that delivers, that makes your jaw drop with its stunning visual, that keeps you on the edge of your seat, that is gripping and pacy and tense and fast and swooning and swashing and plummeting and pulls back just when you’re about to crash.

He does that in spades. Bless his rich cotton socks.