James Cameron
Avatar

"AVATAR": on TV commercials, on the radio, on posters hanging around the city, on t-shirts, on paper cups, on the window panes of highway rest stops, in people's mouths, on banners attached to airplanes (they did it in America!), in video games, in books, and especially on the INTERNET! AVATAR    AVATAR    AVATAR    AVATAR   AVATAR (and so on for the past three months). You lean out the window in the morning and hear the birds chirping in Na'vi!

The promotional campaign of a film usually always brings good results (to attract attention and especially to lure the masses like chickens attracted with feed), but when you spend 150 million dollars to write "masterpiece" even on the walls of public toilets in train stations, it might also become a side effect for someone like me who has been waiting for the film for years, simply because you go to the cinema expecting to see the Madonna of Fatima appear to you during the screening, or to feel emotions like never before. You are there asking yourself every day "but what on earth is this AVATAR? I'm as excited as a child", so even if the film scores a 10, you expect a product worth 100, and when you realize that it’s actually a piece worthy of 10.. well.. try not to be disappointed facing 90 points less! This is more or less the sensation I experienced already within the first fifteen minutes of screening. Cameron's work is undoubtedly of quality, maybe not a perfect 10, but in my opinion, a solid 9.5 is well deserved. (The problem is I expected 100! How exaggerated I am!)

One must first distinguish between a sense of wonder and pure emotion; for example, I could say that looking at a huge cruise ship or an ocean liner like the Titanic, I would feel a sense of wonder, while observing the Eiffel Tower lit up on a magical Parisian evening would cause me an emotion, like a rapid heartbeat, a shiver, something strongly emotional. Seeing a big ape like King Kong roar and fight amazes me, hearing the cry of a newborn moves me. The exact same goes for AVATAR. Entering a three-dimensional world populated by never-before-seen creatures and breathtaking landscapes is something that evokes wonder, awe, you stand there mouth agape, unable to believe your eyes, I take off my glasses for a moment, turn around and see the entire theater immobilized with open mouths, it’s a mass hypnosis that is impossible to escape; you keep questioning how such a thing could be done, wondering if what you see is real! But here.. right in this wonder, a limit is created.

Watching the movie in a theater with 3D stereoscopic digital projection is an unprecedented visual experience (only IMAX could offer more), the eye is invaded by senses, the mind is focused on the effect, and more than watching a movie, it felt like being in Disneyland, in one of those family 3D theaters where only the effect matters, I personally couldn't shift my concentration from the three-dimensional and the amazing photography, all to the detriment of emotions! And here comes the sore point of my experience.. I wasn’t moved! Despite the wonder for eyes and mind, my heart maintained the same beats, my skin never goose-pimpled, my back never had a shiver, the love story didn’t make me dream, the protagonist didn’t make me identify myself too much, my eyes never welled up with emotion (they only watered because of the two hours and forty minutes of eye exertion). That is what AVATAR was for me, lots of visual wonder and little narrative emotion. I am a little disappointed but not disillusioned. I waited for the film for years (long before this promotional campaign for sheep began) and maybe my mistake was expecting a sort of miracle in every field. But then you realize a film can’t be perfect, simply because it’s made by men (translated: simply because it’s made by Americans).

What truly makes this work great was the incredible creative process of the director and his exceptional technical staff (true talents with a capital "T"), James Cameron might even have all the limits of the average American (patriotism, bad-assery, irritating cheap moralism, megalomania...) but he surely is blessed with a brilliant mind! The entire world of Pandora created in his mind, drawn by his hands, constructed with means patented by himself; the word "Director" has never been so appropriate, because he’s the one pulling every single string. We’re not talking about mere directing, Cameron is a hugely talented art director capable, thanks to ingenuity, tenacity, creativity, and let's say it, lots of billions, of pushing technological cinema always a leap forward, evolving the seventh art film by film. For this honor to Cameron (someone would say anyone can make films with money.. I wouldn't be so sure! Look at the crap Roland Emmerich makes!). What this director lacks, in my opinion, is the more "human" side of his directing, the impossibility in my opinion of shooting a grand film without billions of budget. I wonder if the love story told in Titanic would have won him an Oscar for best direction or best film if it had been set in a department store. I don't know.. especially when you consider that his Oscar-winning colleagues like Peter Jackson started their careers with famously shoddy splatter horror films, iconic low-budget movies, while Cameron before his blockbusters was fired on the set of the disgraceful "Piranha II: The Spawning". His recent claims of not wanting to make a traditional film again leave me with doubts about his true abilities as a director without using billions. Now though, for fairness, I must mention his great low-budget film (albeit full of special effects.. and limitations), the legendary "Terminator" of 1984. Cameron is nevertheless a visionary, a creative, and above all, an engineer, a kind of cinema scientist, he might have his directorial limits but it's undeniable he is a talented artist.

That said, what remains of AVATAR? A story seen and revisited millions of times, the good yet bad American wants to bring his fake democracy to poor countries to take the raw materials, an American falls in love with the tribe, joins them and fights for freedom. And here comes the "Braveheart" style speech, the aerial battle a la "True Lies", hand-to-hand between alien and machine of "Aliens" (with the same machine by the way), the Pocahontas-like indigenous, the stunning wild landscapes like "Dances with Wolves" (complete with a civilian trying to integrate into the pack) with the usual military parades seen in a dozen thousand films, all narrated in a visual context never seen before! I don’t know if you can still be moved by these things, unfortunately, I.. don't have 20 years anymore! Well.. I won’t cry, I won't have increased heartbeats, I won't have goosebumps, but in front of such visual beauty you are never too old to be left literally breathless. Of great impact, besides the settings on the edge of the impossible, is undoubtedly the performance of the actors with the infamous performance capture technique, where the director films the real actors on set while simultaneously seeing their virtual counterparts acting on another screen, although "virtual" is a term that feels fake, whereas in the case of Avatar's characters, perfection is sometimes truer than the real! Something never seen before. Particularly striking is the characterization of the natives (their original language, ways of doing, customs, feline movements), especially that of the girl, and the passionate kiss between the two (let's hope they include the infamous mating scene in the DVD!). The 3D effect ensures moments of unprecedented immersion, although in very fast scenes the focus gets a bit lost (this depends on the fact we weren’t in an IMAX theater, surely the viewing in 3D film theaters will be even more out of sync).

"Technically" Cameron crafts the highly acclaimed masterpiece, a true visual artwork and very well directed. Good thing that for every added special effect, a page of the script didn’t get washed out. A real shame.

I hope that in the DVD version, once the 3D novelty fades, I might re-evaluate the story and characters more attentively. For now, my score from 1 to 10 is: 9.5. But it should be specified that 9 is for the visual part (it would be a 10 but the 3D doesn’t work well in fast-paced scenes) and the ,5 is for the "usual" story.

Too high a score? Not in the case of someone who expected 100!