Saw the movie Avatar yesterday in 3-D - wow what a fantastic movie. Reviews of the movie talk about the pantheism theme that runs throughout the movie. Pantheism being the belief that God and the material world are one and the same thing and that God is present in everything - in the movie pantheism comes through as God and nature are one. Reviews have compared the movie to "Dances With Wolves." I could see and feel the link that other reviewers were seeing, but for me I also saw something else. One could not miss the power struggle between machine and life - the machine being bad and life good, the good guy bad guy thing going on. Then there was the love story with struggle. What I saw was different - what I saw had to do with the notion of government - and how the individual is governed. I saw the Na'vi as independent making their own way - very spiritual. I understood the machine as big government trying to take over and control the individual. The underlying notion that profitable business (a favorite theme for movie directors to bash - they just love going fist to fist with big business and making them the bad guys) got lost here it was government the mechanical avatars not the blue guys and gals, taking over trying to control. Trying to make things secular - trying to take faith, belief, God our of the picture. Once that got into my head it couldn't go away. I just love the fact that knowing Cameron probably wanted us to see it as big business as bad - I see it as big government (they even wore camouflage) as bad and hurting the individual and an individual's (in this case the blue people) freedom to worship and create independent individual life. When one understands the movie that way - wow what a statement - and you know what I am free to be able to think of the movie that way.
Aside from all the politics that can be conjured up from the movie - the creativity - was above and beyond and very very inspirational. I found it interesting that there was so much surrealism in the movie even to the point of using some of Salavador Dali's visual images - floating rocks - artists are so way ahead of the time - Dali did the rock think around the 60's - wow the 60's was full of interesting artists and people.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
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