Yesterday, I saw Avatar 3D for the second time. Week before last, I watched District 9 on DVD. I had been pondering a blog post on Avatar since I first saw the film back in January. After seeing this second film and Avatar for a second time, it is time.
Technology
Avatar is a triumph of technical innovation and it is for this alone that I would recommend that everyone see the film on the large screen and in 3D. It is a once-in-a-generation change to the way that movies are created. The techniques and technology that James Cameron and his cohorts have created will filter down to film-making across the board. Cameron has given us a 3D experience like none other and perhaps the prettiest film that I've ever seen. Avatar is, among other things, an action movie. The temptation with an action film is to over-use 3D, to make the entire movie pop out at the audience. Indeed, I think that most films of whatever nature that use 3D go this route more often than not. However, Cameron's genius with Avatar was to use 3D -- even his amazing new wiz-bang 3D -- relatively sparingly. Many shots contain the technology not at all, or in such economy that I could not tell that it was being used. In the rest, more often than not only a bit of the scenery -- and likely as not it wouldn't even be the focus of the scene itself -- would be 3D... just enough to given the added illusion that the viewer was a part a real world. My wife, who saw the film with me yesterday, said that after a while, she simply forgot that the movie was 3D. I would imagine that Cameron would consider this a great compliment. Indeed, the core purpose of this technology, this film-making technique, will not be to have monsters come flying out at the audience -- although that will be fun, too. Rather, it will be to have a scene set in a library and have the rows of books spread around the viewer, bringing him or her within that simple, quiet room. With the surround sound technology that already exists, if Hollywood can simply provide the smell of the books, the transformation will very nearly be complete. The next step up might actually be a Star Trek holodeck. If Cameron could live long enough, he might be the one to get us there.
Cameron has a history of utilizing the latest and greatest technology in his movies. He utilized the first real fluidic CGI movie shots in his wonderful 1989 film The Abyss. (This was not, however, the first use of CGI.)
District 9 was filmed on a much, much, much, much tighter budget. That said, the money spent on its special effects was well-spent. It is a grittier film than Avatar and the dirt and grime that its world displays are evident to the viewer and serve a purpose to the story-telling. Really nothing more needs to be said, I think, about the effects for this film. They are what they are and that is enough.
The Stories
Much has been written about Avatar and its relatively blunt-nosed story-telling. That it has a "green" theme to it is a given. Many also consider it anti-corporate and with that, I wouldn't strongly argue. (Although the idea that a Hollywood movie made by James Cameron could really be anti-corporate is like saying that a news network owned by a major corporation could really be liberal in nature. Ultimately, you don't bite the hand that feeds you.) The Catholic Church has even gone so far as to condemn the movie, saying that it promotes the pagan worship of nature. That is complete poppycock and I'm not just saying that because the Catholic Church wouldn't know an actually moral stance if it reach up and goosed the Pope on his snow-white backside.
The reason that I am blogging about these movies together is that at their core I think they are about what it is that makes us human, about what is it that we share as "collective humanity." Is it only our physical nature, our DNA and features and tissue? I would say no, although surely this is a part of the picture. Is it our souls as those "of faith" would argue? If we have souls, then I would say again, it is a part of the picture, but only a part. What makes us human, what gives us our collective sense of humanity, is our ability to empathize beyond ourselves. We can reach out to another human -- and even to beings other than human, both real and imagined -- and put ourselves in their place, to feel what they feel, to see through their eyes. Thus we say: Walk a mile in my shoes. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Treat your brother as you want to be treated. And so on. I am able to rationally believe that I am not the center of the universe, that another has value, even that another has rights equal to my own.
Science fiction has long been among the best, most powerful tools to tell such stories. Indeed, it is often a way to convey the moral message of acceptance to audiences who would or could hear no other. Star Trek -- the original series -- did this in America for example, dealing with topics ranging from the Vietnam War to racial bigotry to McCarthyism to nuclear armageddon. Themes and direct imagery that never would have made it past the censors -- much less the goodwill of the corporate sponsors -- were shown to a public that knew what it was seeing. At least in part.
The mother ship in District 9 comes to rest over Johannesburg rather than the more-often-used New York or Washington DC or Moscow. This is not a mistake, nor is it due to the backgrounds of the movie-makers or to budget constraints. Rather, setting this film on a continent that itself has been plundered by the more powerful, among people who have been abused by those more powerful, sends a message with every frame. Humans -- even those otherwise downtrodden themselves -- treat the aliens not only as being lesser, but as being nothing. It is not the concentration camp into which they have been placed that is most telling. It is the very dehumanizing name that the aliens are given, Prawn. A prawn is other. A prawn is lesser. A prawn can be used and abused and even killed... without it reflecting on us, without it lessening us. Yet it very much does reflect on us. It does lessen us. An attack on a prawn is an attack on a human. The biology may be different, but the humanity is the same.
And so it is with the Na'vi on Pandora in Avatar. What is more, however, is that it is not only the Na'vi who are mistreated, tortured, and murdered by humans. It is also Aywa who is harmed -- and disregarded -- by the humans. Seen as a deity by the Na'vi, Aywa is not truly that. Nor is Aywa humanoid. Still, Aywa does -- I would argue -- possess humanity and should thus be treated as such. This mass of biology may be something that the humans on Pandora -- much less we humans here on the earth of 2010 -- can not hope to understand. Still, Aywa is conscious. Aywa is aware. Aywa is sentient. And just as harming the Na'vi diminishes us, so too does harming Aywa.
That a planet-wide mass of biological matter can be "human" represents the wonder of science fiction. Avatar is slick and smooth and clean. District 9 is raw and messy and bloody. Both of these films, however, have much to say. And not all of it as blunt-nosed as critics might think.
14 March 2010
27 March 2010 Addition: I added the "Pope" link above to a NYT article to make my point.
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