Text: In defence of Avatar

Image: Taken in a country shop in NZ, beside meadows which replaced forests of Kauri trees.

A letter to the Editor

Age reviewer, Jim Schembri, derides Avatar for its "eco-cliches", its lack of content and flaws in its plot (The Age 9/1/10).

I guess whether you think Avatar presents "platitudes about the grandeur of nature" or not depends on your view of the world and on your fears. It seems misguided to dismiss a film on such grounds when so much of the world's natural environment, its flora and fauna, remains endangered.

Apparently writer/director James Cameron first started working on the story for Avatar in 1994. As he developed ideas for it, perhaps he had in mind the genocide of the indigenous peoples of North America and Australia, the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, the dropping of napalm in Vietnam, the ruin of Iraq's marshlands, and the destruction of Mayan villages in the jungles of Guatemala. The list won't stop growing since conflict between cultures has occurred throughout history; what Cameron dared to do was present North Americans as culpable. This makes it a little like a cowboy and Indian film in which the "goodies" become the "baddies". However, Cameron avoids stereotyping a group by merging forces and by focusing on the willful destruction and killing, the "bad" that is being done.

Schembri noted holes in the plot, and there were moments in the film when I wondered "how can that be?" (I think Schembri's "how can that be" questions had easy answers. Was he paying attention?) But I suspended my disbelief as I would in a dream - as one does in the theatre or cinema. And rather than compare the film to an epic such as Lawrence of Arabia - as Schembri does in his review - I felt it played out like a myth which the rational mind could briefly examine, but which needed to be passed to some deeper, less clinical and cynical "brain". To the brain that can open people up to poetry and art, to stories from The Dreaming, the Bhadavad Gita or even the Old Testament.

Rather than shrewd marketing and 3D splendour being the reason for Avatar's box office success, it may be the film's ability to touch deep recesses within our psyche which explains it. The line in the film "I see you" goes to the heart of human affairs.

Jim Schembri's review in The Age:

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2010/01/08/1262453673760.html

Interviews with J. Cameron that are worth watching:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7CPxb8zFkM (lengthy interview with Cameron and cast after winning the Golden Globe)

http://testtubetelly.channel4.com/programmes/items/81671147 (brief interview - Tavis Smiley interviews Cameron)