Movie Review: Avatar

LITTLE ROCK — When a film brashly asserts that it will change moviemaking forever, one feels the urge to either take its “king of the world” arrogance down a notch or hail it as the masterpiece it claims to be. But what if there’s a third option?

James Cameron’s 3-D Avatar is a movie whose effects are revolutionary, a spectacle millions will find adventure in. Yet it feels unsatisfying and lacks the pulse of a truly alive film.

It takes place in the year 2154 on the faraway moon of Pandora, where, befitting its mythological name, the ills of human life have been released. The Earth depleted, humans have arrived to mine an elusive mineral, wryly dubbed Unobtainium.

The Resources Developmental Administration, a kind of military contractor, runs the operation. At the top of the chain of command is the CEO-like Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), who’s hellbent on profits. His head of security is the rock-jawed Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), who curses Pandora’s inhabitants (the Na’vi) as savages and considers the place worse than hell.

In fact, it’s paradise. Cameron has fashioned a sensual, neon-colored, dreamlike world of lush jungle, gargantuan trees and floating mountains. Its splendor is easily the most wondrous aspect of Avatar.

Cameron, like the deep sea diver that he is, lets his camera peer with fascination at the glow-in-the-dark plant life, the six-legged horses and - especially beautiful - the nighttime frog like creatures that, when touched, open a bright white sail and spiral into the air.

It’s this sense of discovery - in Pandora, in the wizardry of the filmmaking - that makes Avatar often thrilling.

Our main character is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a brawny former Marine who lost the power of his legs in battle on Earth. His scientisttwin brother has just died and Sully, having a matching genome, is invited to replace him in a mission to Pandora.

He joins a small group of scientists led by Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver) who are attempting to learn more about the Na’vi by conducting field studies. They’ve created avatars of themselves to go about Pandora as living, breathing Na’vi, while their human bodies lie dormant in a sort of tanning bed.

The Na’vi are a 10-foot tall species with translucent, aqua-colored skin, three-fingered hands and smooth, leantorsos. They have long, neat dreadlocks for hair and wide, feline foreheads. Their freckles faintly light up like tiny constellations.

With beady headdresses and skimpy sashes, the Na’vi are clearly meant to evoke American Indians, as well as similarly exploited tribes of South America and Africa. They pray over slain animals and feel at one with nature. Their tails even connect - like nature’s USB port - to things like mystical willow branches, horse manes or the hair of pterodactyl-like birds.

Avatar is essentially a fairy tale that imagines a more favorable outcome for the oppressed fighting against the technology and might of Western civilization. Sully, who quickly takes to life as a Na’vi, begins to feel his allegiances blurred.

Though he has promised Quaritch to spy on the Na’vi (their home lies atop an Unobtainium deposit), he begins to appreciate their ways. He also falls for Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), the Na’vi princess.

The inevitable battle has overt shades of current wars. Quaritch, drinking coffee during a bombing with a cavalier callousness, drops phrases like “pre-emptive strike,” “fight terror with terror” and even “shock and awe,” a term apparently destined to survive for centuries in the lexicon.

These historical and contemporary overtones bring the otherworldly down to Earth and down to cliche. The message of environmentalism and of (literal) tree-hugging resonates, but such a plainly just cause saps Avatar of drama and complexity.

MovieStyle, Pages 40 on 12/18/2009

Print Headline: EPIC ILLUSION