GB: Avatar

It's a rare event for me to go to the cinema to see a movie. My preference, nowadays, is to watch dvd's. It's cheaper, more comfortable and there are no theatre ushers to complain about feet on seats, hot food or noisy talking. Plus, you can pause, rewind or fast forward. Imagine doing those things in a cinema.

Avatar is different. It's not a movie, it's an experience. Or as one reviewer recently wrote: 'it's an EVENT'. For $16 and the small discomfort of wearing 3D glasses for two hours and forty minutes, I traveled to another world, a place never imagined but so real, so tangible, so convincing that I accept it into my understanding of all that exists as true.

The story is captivating and engaging. Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic war veteran, adopts his dead brother’s avatar in an attempt to win the trust of the indigenous people (the Na’vi) so that he can negotiate their relocation. Their village rests over an immense and valuable mineral store. Either the Na’vi must be moved or be killed – the latter being an acceptable final option. Jake’s reward for a successful infiltration will be surgery to restore the use of his legs. The prize is personal and he is highly motivated to bewitch and betray. I cared for him. I cared about the outcome, about what is at stake for him and the physical and emotional toll of the work. Moreover I cared about the people he is charged with displacing.

The events unfold at a kaleidoscopic pace and though the story is not new – really, what story is – the presentation knocks this film out of the ball park. The people, plants and creatures are so realistic, magnificent and awesome that it contorts my mind to remind myself that they are fantasy. Ordinarily, CGI work, regardless of how well crafted, is unable to trick the mind. I watch and engage but do not believe beyond the adventure that plays out before me. The deception fails to endure. This was not the case with Avatar.

The environment is depth perfect; finely rendered with light, colour, contrast, movement, perception and contour. Forests are rich from the upper canopy to the soil and shrub layer. Sky islands tower and cluster, suspended by a force beyond our known physics. Trees, monumental in size and height, form branched bridges hundreds of feet above the ground. Beautiful, fragile jelly-like illuminated floating seeds waft and throb with a life force barely imagined, and flying, pterosaur-like creatures with skins of stunning mosaics soar and glide as though woven to the sky. Height features heavily in many scenes and acrophobics may need to buckle themselves in.

The Na'vi are as stunning as their environment. These people, so very human and yet distinctly not, bewitched me. Tall, lithe and agile, they are sculpted humans with cat-like ears and sweeping tails. They live as one with the forest, trusting and accepting the right of all to life and liberty. They accept Jake’s avatar as one of their own and train him to communicate and bond with the animals. Eventually they make him a Na’vi warrior though they know he is one of the sky people (a human imposter). Not all humans have been so accepted and it seems to me that, despite his conscious deception, they knew him better than he knew himself.

An environmental, sociological and philosophical message throbs deep within the narrative. One reviewer suggested that the story was written by an ‘aging hippy’, and maybe that’s the case but the beauty of this film is that the viewer can choose to be affected (and changed) by the subtext or to be innocently entertained. The delivery is the magic.

The climax, catastrophic and demanding, is long, enduring and emotionally draining but oh so deliciously daring and visually wrenching. Played out in unparalleled 3D, I dare anyone to watch and hold their popcorn steady throughout.

I can’t wait to see it again! I just have to save up another $16 and find someone who wants to come with me. Any takers?