Last night, Judy and I saw AVATAR in 3D. This film is a milestone in cinema. Though I have no words to adequately describe my experience, I will try here. Great art changes the person who experiences it, or the group who experiences the art collectively by seeing, reading, hearing or feeling a new art form. It changes how you view the world, how you feel about the world, what you think about it. It hands you a vision, a freshness that asks you: NOT “Do you see what I see? Do you hear what I hear” BUT, “Can you see what I see? Can you hear what I hear? Can you think what I think?”
In historical terms, AVATAR will rank up there with pivotal cinematic thresholds, the first film ever made, first “talkie” sound film, first FX film, first color film, first film with digital CGI technology … you get the picture. But AVATAR is far more than that. It has a depth and resonance so crucial to the times in which we live, when we are on the brink of possible worldwide extinction and forced to ask profoundly significant questions, the answers to which will affect our survival and connections in the universe.
AVATAR in 3D allows you to live in this incredible visceral and sensory world that is spiritual, ties to indigenous peoples and profoundly interconnected nature that we in the 21st Century have lost, and to a new philosophy of life that unifies people and nature (in the broadest sense of the word). It is a blend of a revolutionary cinematic technology and ancient spiritual wisdom passed on over thousands of years from indigenous cultures (Maya, Hopi, Lakota Sioux, Aborigines, Inca, Navajo…) who have left a wealth of information about how the very soul of this massive universe works, how EVERYTHING on the most basic level is connected. This is not just a mythical, “feely-good” sentimental concept dreamt up by New Agers, but a series profound revelations discovered by Pulitzer-Prize and Nobel Prize winning scientists over the last two decades, much of which has been made as a result of Hubble, the complete mapping of human DNA, and other milestones of scientific discovery, not to mention the spiritual leaders of the planet who have been “preaching” this unifying premise for years.
AVATAR’s story is at times predictable, but that predictability is more a product of the very laws of human behavior proven by thousands of years of wars and conflict, and the struggle of a people to protect the most significant things which those people consider to be far great than themselves.
The alien characters in AVATAR, who live in the world Pandora, each have radiant dots on their faces. The dots look like stars. Each character has a different star mapping, yet they are united by the stars that are part of who they are, just as we are an integral part of the night sky and stars that shine above us, whether we are aware of it or not.
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