Actor Stephen Lang: As Avatar's Colonel
Miles Quaritch, Lang plays the
role of merciless
invader, a kind of modern analogue to Marlon
Brando
as Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, in Apocalypse Now.
Cyberpresse, Canada
The Film Avatar is the 'Apocalypse Now of the Virtual Age'
"It's
refreshing as hell to see a mainstream director take so many risks, primarily
financial, then commercial and finally political, by so directly denouncing
American military occupation."
But
for my teenager, who insisted on it, I would never, ever, have gone to see Avatar,
James Cameron's mega-fable starring blue giants with the faces of dogs and big
yellow balls in the place of eyes. But it was the holiday season,
the time of year when every respecting parent is ready to satisfy every whim of
her children, giving them free reign to stuff their pockets with films about avatars
or monsters.
And
so it was that I headed out for Avatar, my purse stuffed with prejudices
and my ears ringing with the enlightened comments of my colleagues Cassivi and Lussier, who couldn't
stop mentioning on the radio how the plot of this film, with a budget that
could feed the whole of Africa, is a complete zero, simplistic, a caricature,
and crudely Manichean [a
simplistic tale of good vs. evil]. The care that was taken with the special
effects, the set design and the art direction never found its equivalent in the
development of story and character development. In short, I expected the worst,
and when the theater employee handed me an old pair of scratched up 3D glasses,
I told myself that the worst was just beginning - and what's more, almost three
hours of it. Misery!
But when I passed into the futuristic
military lab, where I understood literally none of what was going on, for a
first dive into the luxurious and verdant world of the Na'vis,
something happened. Not only did I begin to relax and appreciate the journey, but
to my great delight I saw the dawn of what would unfold. An ecological fable,
and what's more, a film that's ferociously anti-militarist and almost
anti-American; a sort of Apocalypse Now for
the virtual age without the tormenting profundity of the Joseph Conrad novel
and without the intellectuality of its script, but with the same fierce
determination to show the ravages of excessive militarization.
"It's
rare to have a blockbuster with a position as negative about the state of
American civilization," wrote a critic of the magazine Telerama. To
which I would add: "It may be rare, but it's refreshing as hell to see a
mainstream director take so many risks, primarily financial, then commercial
and finally political, by so directly denouncing American military occupation,
as much in Vietnam as in Iraq and Afghanistan. A director who, furthermore, has
launched into popular culture the bizarre Sanskrit word from the Hundu religion: avatar.
Cameron's
only advantage in this respect is that Avatar is not a part of George
Bush's America, but the more open and diverse America of Barack Obama.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
Marlin Brando as Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, the American invader
gone wrong of Francis Ford
Coppola's Apocalypse Now: Is the
introspection of the film Avatar
in the same cinematic tradition?
Perhaps
this is what explains the dazzling success of the film that, despite a slow
start, has finally crossed the $1 billion mark. And this also explains the sudden
raising of shields on the American right: since the end of the holidays, it has
begun furiously vilifying a film that it reproaches for, among other things,
being unpatriotic. Curiously, when the film opened before Christmas, the right had
been rather silent or downright indifferent. But from the moment Avatar
began to gain traction and rake in, from France to Brazil to Russia, over $600
million in foreign sales, the American right awakened. It leapt to defend the
honor of the homeland, affronted not only by a leftist from Hollywood but a
Canadian leftist to boot!
Personally,
the fact that preeminent members of the dull-minded right like of Rush Limbaugh
and Bill O'Reilly revile this film makes me like all the more. Not to the point
of going to see it again, but enough to make me thank my teenager for having
opened the way and letting me appreciate Avatar.
