Avatar

Standard synopsis

From the Wikipedia page, slightly edited

Avatar is a 2009 American science fiction epic film written and directed by James Cameron and starring Sam Worthington (Corporal Jake Sully), Zoe Saldana (Neytiri), Sigourney Weaver (Dr. Grace Augustine), Michelle Rodriguez (Trudy Chacón), Stephen Lang (Colonel Miles Quaritch), Giovanni Ribisi (Parker Selfridge), Joel David Moore (Norm Spellman), C. C. H. Pounder (Mo'at), Wes Studi (Eytucan), Laz Alonso (Tsu'tey), and Dileep Rao (Dr. Max Patel), . The film is set in the year 2154, when humans are mining a precious mineral called unobtanium on Pandora, a lush moon in Alpha Centauri. The expansion of the mining colony threatens the continued existence of a local tribe of Na'vi—a sentient humanoid species indigenous to Pandora. The film's title refers to the genetically engineered Na'vi bodies used by several human characters to interact with the natives of Pandora.

Development on Avatar began in 1994, when Cameron wrote an 80-page scriptment for the film. Filming was supposed to take place after the completion of Cameron's 1997 film Titanic, for a planned release in 1999,[8] but according to Cameron, the necessary technology was not yet available to portray his vision of the film. Work on the language for the film's extraterrestrial beings began in summer 2005, and Cameron began developing the script and fictional universe in early 2006.

Avatar was officially budgeted at US$237 million. Other estimates put the cost between $280 million and $310 million for production, and at $150 million for promotion.The film was released for traditional two-dimensional projection, as well as in 3-D, using the RealD 3D, Dolby 3D, XpanD 3D and IMAX 3D formats. The film was touted as a breakthrough in filmmaking technology, for its development of 3D viewing and stereoscopic filmmaking with cameras that were specially designed for the film's production.

Avatar premiered in London on December 10, 2009, and was released internationally on December 16, and in North America on December 18, to critical acclaim and commercial success. The film broke several box office records during its release and became the highest-grossing film of all time in North America and worldwide, surpassing Titanic, which had held the records for the previous 12 years. It also became the first film to gross more than $2 billion.[22] Following the film's success, Cameron stated that there will be a sequel. Avatar has been nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

My thoughts and comments:

(written 17 & 19 February 2010)

(note: contains spoilers! So if you haven't seen the movie but still inted to, do so before reading this review/commentary on it!)

I saw Avatar the movie yesterday (16 Feb) (it had already been out for some time but I wanted to avoid the crowds at the release, as itw as teh cinema was still crowded) on the imax here. I have to say it has to be seen in 3D on a really big screen or it probably doesn't have the same impact. I have to say the 3D was amazing; i've seen special effects, but nothing like this. What Mark Wilson says on Gizmodo - see Avatar Review: Yes, It Changed Everything After All - pretty much sums up my own experiencxes too, although I was taken more naively into the film, and missed some of the things he refers to

I was expecting typical special effects trinkets mixed with mindless plot garbage, but instead found myself powerfully effected. I went with a friend, it affected us both; I could barely talk after coming out, words seemed empty and facile.

It has certainly given me new respect for James Cameron (i liked Terminator but was put off by the romantic slushiness of Titanic)

And the more I think about this movie, the more I realise there are spiritual themes embedded in it. So it is a question of exoteric and esoteric, or of levels of heremeutic interpretation and layers of meaning; e.g. the destruction of the world tree can refer both to the brutality and insensitivity of the grossest (but also a very large) level of humanity to plants and trees (and I have witnessed this first hand), but and also to the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, the heartland and "World Tree" in a sense of America and the Western World. So the West is not only the perpetrator of atrocities, but also the victim of atrocities (I would however trace Islamic extremism back to karma generated by the Crusades, but that is another story...)

On the literal level it is a sci fi adventure story about a guy on an alien planet

A bit deeper but still on the exoteric level it is an allegory or morality tale about capitalist greed, the treatment of indigenous peoples (when i read the reviews on line it was pointed out that it is a remake of Dances with Wolves; I have to agree), the destruction of the environment the american war in Iraq, the terrorist destruction of the Twin Towers, etc etc.

Because of its eco-spiritual message I am sure it offended a lot of conservative people who cannot tolerate environmentalism, nature mysticism, or any criticism of the ugly side of the Western way of life. As for myself, I am a tree hugger, a greenie, an animal lover, a vegan (although the movie in keeping with its idealism of tribal peoples doesn't mention veganism), and proud of it. So what this movie said was very real to me.

But beyond that are the esoteric interpretations, which are what I am most intersted in. Here are some themes

The Spiritual Path - from Ignorance to Truth

The essence of the spiritual path is that one starts out in falsehood and ignorance and progresses to Light and Truth. To quote the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad

The weelchair-bound Jake starts out as a willing instrument of ignorance and falsehood. Athough ostensibly part of the Avatar program (by which he remotely occupies a Na'vi body to gain the trust of the indigenous people), he is actually conveying information to Colonel Quaritch, the rather one dimensional villain of the story (most big budget stories have one dimensional villians), in exchange for the expensive medical treatment that will fix his paralysis. But as he comes to spend more and more time with the Na'vi, he learns the beauty of their lifestyle and their appreciation of nature, until that becomes real and his previous life unreal. Finally, the insensitivity of the megacorporate miners and brutality of the their ex-marine security forces causes him to switch sides. This represents the main theme of the movie, leading to the climactic battle scenses.

Jake and Quaritch represent counterpoles; one is open to change, and eventually does change, the other is totally fixed and refuses to.

Similarily Parker Selfridge, the Corporate administrator, when told by Dr. Grace Augustine that the trees on Pandora have connections like the neurons in the human brain, so that the planetary ecosystem is like one giant brain, at first listens uncomprehedingly, then laughs and exclaims "what have you people been smoking?" Although exoterically and most obviously this conveys the clash of paradigms between modernity and postmaterialistic holism, more esoterically it represents the refusal of the skeptic or materialist to appreciate spiritual truths.

This transition from ignorance to sensitivity has very much defined the progress of my own spiritual development. When i was growing up I was ignorant, I ate meat, I was unconscious of institutionalised cruelty to animals or environmental destruction, I even was led to believe (because I lived in a rather politically conservative household; my mother was worried about Communism) that activist groups like Friends of the Earth were manipulated by the KGB. As the years and decades past, my inner Divine center came more to the fore, my outer being was transmuted, and I came to adopt very strong and uncompriomising environmentalist and sentientist principles. So from being one thing, I became the opposite. From being in falsehood, I came to know truth. This conversion process, this transformation, is at the core of all spiritual paths, and is represented mythologically by the hero's journey, the hero representing both the inner soul and the outer ego and vehicles of consciousness which have to grow and develop through stages of consciousness. Sure in the movie it is presented in a crass and simplistic manner, but that is what myths and stories do; they present subtle truths in a simplistic manner.

Touching the Earth

In the movie, the protagonist Jake does not have the use of his legs. That means, symbolically, he is not connected to the Earth. This represents modern man living in an artificial environment, eating processed foods, alienated from nature, alienated from the body and from life. It could also be taken to mean not being grounded, not b eing in the here and now.

In his avatar body he is able to move with grace and agility. I was interested by the choice here between the Na'vi body and the corporate funded medical treatment. Each would restore his ability to walk, but in one it is an artifical, mechanical way, which might be symbolised by the robot fighting machines (in Japanese anime called mecha), that medical treatment and the other marines use, representing the ahrimanic world in contrast to the natural world. Indeed, medical science has been tending more and more to the artifical (and even alternative medicine has made very little inroads). Hence the two ways of walking, the two paths so to speak (because one walks upon the path), one leading to greater alienation, destruction, exploitation (the corporation and the machine mecha), the other to harmony and balance.

Sensitivity to all beings

The way the Na'vi connect to the animals and plants through these tendrils at the end of their hair seems to me a nice metaphor for sentientism, i.e. feeling of empathy with and sensitivity for animals and the nature kingdom in general, as well as love of and sensitivity to plants. Of course, as a literal biological ability it is ridiculous, a sort of fibre optic extension. But as metaphor it refers to that sense of one-ness with all life.

In terms of stages of Consciousness evolution, this movie represents the "Green" or "Holistic" stage; including Gaia-sensitivity and devic awareness

But I would go beyond the movie's theme of the whole palnet of Pandora as a single global brain, one Gaian consciousness, to a higher sentientist realisation of all beings as having feelings, value, an inner Divine presence.

The celestial body

The remote avataric Na'vi body Jake occupies is reminiscent of astral travel. Once out of the physical (i.e. his ordinary) body with its restrictions, he experiences wonderful visages and travels to amazing places. Like Hindu deities, the aesthetics of whom Cameron was influenced by in choosing the skin colour of the indigenous humanoids, the Na'vi have blue skin. In thsi respect they symbolise celestial beings, blue being (in Theon's and the Mother's cosmology) a colour associated with the mental (spiritual) plane

The Imaginal World

Another thing that if taken literally is unscientific is that, when we consider biological constraints the animals and plants are too big and move too lithely for their size (even allowing for lower gravity). This over-infatuation with size is also evident in Star Wars - The Phantom Menace (where a bunch of animals including what look like Balucotherium gallop out of a forest, and there are fish much bigger than small submarines, and even bigger fish again, in a swamp), King Kong and especially the disappointing Peter Jackson remake which even has gigantic nematode worms, in the truly appalling American remake of Godzilla, and even Walking with Dinosaurs/Beasts/Monsters where all the creatures are one and a half to twice their maximum size (a 25 meter long Liopleurodon, really!

But what is being metaphorically referred to here (even Walking with Dinosaurs!) is not the gross physical world, but the imaginal. In the imaginal world, things are more dramatic, beautiful, archetypal, larger than life. They are larger than life because they cannot be contained by material constraints and limitations. The Na'vi are ten feet tall, the world tree, like Yggdrasil, streches high into the sky, containing whole worlds within it. On Pandora there are floating mountains, teher are all sorts of wonders, jsut as there are in the Mundus Imaginalis.

Mythos and Logos

None of this is to deny the film has failings. I was for example very interested to read David Brooks' essay The Messiah Complex (January 7, 2010, New York Times), in which he describes it as an example of the young white male messianic complex, with indigenous people as bit players in need of salvation. Thinking about it, everything he says is true. But having said that, I would also defend the movie this sort of criticism

A movie like Avatar represents an example of the myth of the hero; it is a Western story, not an indigenous tribal story (they would have their own myths of the hero). Also, if you are going to start analysing, well I could say that , as just mentioned in the previous section, the biology is ridiculous. So is the planetology; if Pandora has lower gravity than Earth, it could retain its atmosphere; look what happened to Mars! While even allowing enormous technological advances, Interstellar travel would take decades even to Alpha Centauri, not just months of cryostais. That a megacorporation expensive military grade hardware and in-house marines is something of a worn cliche. And why ship bulldozers from Earth, where every additional gram of payload no doubt costs thousands more, when you could much more cheaply assemble them from local materials?

So the movie has to immersed in, not only visually but conceptually (in the sense of understanding the deeper and spontaneously arising meanings in these themes. Rationalistic criticism, while useful, should never be allowed to destroy the dream and fantasy. Otherwise it becomes imbalanced. Rationlistic criticism pertains to the "system A" (reason, logos) polarity described by Stan Gooch; taht aspect of consciousness which takes away the magic by revealing teh harsh light of day. In contrast Avatar with its 3D immersion and gaian themes is a "system B" / mythos approach. In keeping with Ken Wilber's multiple perspectives, truth standards, and methodologies, both perspectives are just as real, jsut as valid, just as authentic. One pertains to the trutrhs (or teh dry scientific and historical facts) of the oyter world, the other to the truths and nourishing imaginal perception of the inner world. Both are necessary.

The problem with sequels

Cameron is reportedly intending to make a sequel; to tell the truth, I hope he doesn't, because sequels tend to have problems living up to the original; indeed they drag the original down. e.g. William Gibson's Neuromancer was one of the most amazing novels I read, if stand alone. It ends of the Singularity. But then there are two sequels that destroy the whole thing. Left me feeling cheated, why bother reading the book in the first place? Or George Lucas' Star Wars prequel trilogy, widely agreed by fans and critics alike to have been a real let down. Midichlorians? Jar Jar Binks? What was the guy thinking? He basically ruins the whole mythos he built up so brilliantly in the original trilogy. And I could think of lost more examples (e.g. the sequel to Hellraizer was absolutely terrible; although the sequel to that did restore the Hellraiser universe a little, but still not as much as if there had been no sequels at all)

People who want to wrote or direct or make sequels shoudl consider that it is what is not said that is so powerful. Just as Avatar ends on such a strong note. Why destroy that with sequels?

(However, one instance of sequels that i liked was in the Matrix trilogy; in this I regard those sequels in a very different way to most geekls and sci fi fans, the majority of whom really liked the first Matrix with its cyberpunk and philosophical overtones, but consider the follow-ups in a very negative light; in any case they bombed at the box office).

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