A Mirror Floating in Water
Avatar review
by , 01-09-2010 at 03:17 AM (1158 Views)
We walked out of the theater. Me, Emily and Zach. Ten degrees below zero. We got into the car. Five minutes later Zach and I discovered that we really had to pee, really bad. I had drank two large sodas in the theater, and so did Zach. Soon enough we were bouncing up and down like little kids. Zachs house was only a couple of minutes away, but it seemed like forever. We even considered pulling over and peeing on the side of the road. Yes, we had to go that bad. But then a car drove past and we got back in, afraid of a police car driving by.
Soon enough after enough unbearable anticipation and suffering we got to his house and we ran out.
This pretty much parralells my experience at Avatar. All of a sudden shocking, tedious and you can't wait to get out.
Let me tell you my anticipation. This seems pretty much to be one of the best reviewed film out now. Ebert put it on his best of the year list. Many people on here loved it. People were comparing it to Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. One detractor on this website, NickAdams, who had not seen the movie, but stated that he didn't care about the innovations in special effects, he cared more about innovations in narrative and character. I knew how he felt, being more thrilled by films like Werckmeister Harmonies than say 2012. But after all I heard, I thought of him being a bit close-minded, for if one treats Star Wars as a profound art film, then it will come out as a superficial mess with a fortune-cookie philosohy. But if you treat it for what it is, and that is a purely entertaining Saturday night-matinee, then you get one of the greatest films of all time.
Avatar is not one of them. It is no Star Wars nor is it no Lord of the Rings. People seem to have a habit of overreating to James Cameron's films, and whilst watching it I thought what a mediocre director Cameron was in comparison to Peter Jackson. Neither really make profound films nor a either anywhere close to the likes of Stanley Kubrick, but Jackson applies special effects in such a masterful way, that I was thinking about The Lord of the Rings the whole time I was watching this movie.
Take a simple example. In The Lord of the Rings Jackson uses the beating of the Ring-Wraiths wings as a hallucinatory and atmospheric dread. The theater becomes silent as the stereo blurts out the minimalistic pounding draining out eveything. When you think about it it's quite poetic. Now despite my youthful passion for the films when they first came out over seven years ago, I now consider The Lord of the Rings to be despite its landmark influence on special effects, I no longer see it as a great film. But Avatar is not even a good film and is infinitley more tedious than even a second of the nine hours of the three LOTR films.
What's even more insulting is that the special effects at times, or rather most of the time, are so obviously. .. . .special effects. CGI today is used so indulgently that it all seems all too cartoonish. LOTR, before the CGI explosion, used it to an extent in which is was supposed to convince you that it was reality. For every second I saw Gollum, I was utterly convinced that he was real and that Mordor was a real place. The texture of monsters like Shelob seemed so realistic that I was truly freaked out. Here, there are some rather beautiful images, but everything looks like a special effect and are utterly unconvincing. The whole time I was thinking "oh look how well done these special effects are" and not "wow I hope the blue aliens survive". See. I cared so little about this films world and characters that I even forgot what those creatures are called. This has got to be one of the most passive movie going experiences I have ever had. So much was happening on-screen, but I was completely shut-off, it was as if a great distance existed between me and the screen.
That said, somewhere under here lies the film so many critics were talking about. The avatar thing is fascinating and the way it is gone about is enthralling. The romance between one of the creatures and the main character is charming and rather beautiful, and Zoe Salanda's performance as the films herorine (all animated mind you) is quite convincing and rather good. But all of this, all of the wonders done with the special effects and story (despite the weak dialouge and screenplay) are put to no good use with James Cameron's arrogant, indulgent and awful direction which has no skill or respect for aesthetic effect or even special effects themselves. He just throws this well-done CGI at you and puts no life or feeling into it. There was not one second of the film in which I felt like I had entered the films world. Not one. My mind was in the theater the whole time.
Now of course James Cameron's going to get nominated for Best Director and his film may even get a Best Picture nomination, as well as nine others, just like with Titanic, because Hollywood is always immedietly impressed with a special effects film that is halfway better than something like Transformers. Sitting through Avatar is nowhere near the pain and torture of sitting through Transformers, but at least everyone else in the theater thinks so. Avatar is bound to be named by the general public as one of the greatest films of all time just as much as they did with Titanic and LOTR. Though that may be, fifty years from now, Citizen Kane will still stand tall. 4/10
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