One of these days I may write something about Saturday’s big solo & ensemble competition and the non-stop running I did from 8 until 1:30 . . . or the dizzying array of auditions I heard at the Racine Theater Guild Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening for “The Producers” . . . but for some reason what I feel like writing about is what I did Saturday night. Kathy was busy working in the Racine Theater Guild’s box office, so I had to figure out some bachelor fun for myself. So I called Marshall and the two of us went to see the movie that everyone in the solar system had already seen and (for the most part) loved.
And I gotta say that this movie is an amazing ride. There have been a lot of glorious-looking movies made before this one, but Avatar felt like something entirely rich and new. . . familiar in some ways yet so utterly unprecedented. My eyes were absolutely glued to the screen because I didn’t want to miss one morsel of this visual feast. I loved the splendor of the alien planet which came to life so vividly- and the new technology which allowed those Naavi beings to seem entirely real. And I very much liked the relative simplicity and straightforwardness of the plot, which made sense and was easy to follow. (When you’re busy just taking in so much through your eyes, there aren’t enough synapses in the brain left to process an unnecessarily complicated story.)
I do have a complaint – and it’s significant – because for me it’s what keeps this enjoyable movie from being a truly great movie. It’s that the story line – which I’m glad was fairly simple in its design – was also simplistic, which I was not glad about. The good guys were SO good- the bad guys were SO bad- and much of the story spun out in such predictable fashion, as so many Hollywood films have before it, right down to the nastiest of the bad guys being the last one to fall. (The kind of moment where you find yourself thinking and maybe even saying out loud “yeah, right.” ) A truly great film, in my opinion, needs to do something more profound with its story and its characters, and this story didn’t. And I guess for me the acid test was that if this movie had not been tremendously spectacular to look at, there is no way it would have been nominated for Best Picture. (A parallel example could be drawn from the world of orchestral music. Some works are wonderful mostly because of how they are orchestrated – in how the composer has combined the colors of the orchestra in spectacular ways – but the actual music itself, if only heard on the piano, would be pedestrian. But other works are wonderful whether heard in full orchestration or if in some simple, boiled-down arrangement. Or some songs are wonderful no matter who sings them – while other songs are only great because they are arranged magnificently, and shorn of that they are ordinary. For me, Avatar is such a movie. It’s greatness is too dependent on what it looks like- if the story / the characters been profoundly created and crafted in innovative ways, then this movie would probably be one of the greatest movies ever made. As it is, it’s a tremendously entertaining film- but true greatness eludes it.
Sorry, Mr. Cameron.
p.s.- evidently the Academy agreed with me.