I really enjoyed the piece I read in The State this morning by the Hilton Head Island Packet‘s Jeff Vrabel, which dared to trash the excessively beloved “Avatar.” To wit:
Anyway, the point is “Avatar” is dumb. It is, as my wife succinctly put it, a corny combination of “Return of the Jedi” and “Ferngully.” It is eight hours long, all characters are played by an iMac (including Sigourney Weaver) and every frame is filled with the suffocating sense of bruising self-importance you would expect from maybe Sarah Palin. Yes, it looks great, and so does Blake Lively, and both she and “Avatar” become distinctly less attractive when their talking-sounds begin.
Moreover, it is the kind of movie in which I, a viewer fully behind the film’s ecology-centered pseudo-doctrines, found myself in the end rooting actively for the military-industrial complex to exterminate the stretchy blue people and their USB-cord hair. Now that’s not their fault, mind you; they seem like nice hippies. It’s just that the way Cameron makes them talk, using extended proclamations of patronizing importance, made me wish for something terrible to happen to them, hopefully by vampires…
I haven’t even seen this movie (and probably won’t until it’s on DVD, or at least showing at the dollar movie house), but I was already tired of hearing people gush about it. And Mr. Vrabel also affirmed my suspicion — based on things I’d heard here and there — that the flick was to a great extent a big-budget wallow in politically tiresome sentimentality, a sort of high-tech “Dances With Wolves.” You know, bad military industrial complex picking on a race of people who are far finer, and much bluer, than we are, yadda-yadda…
Funny thing is, now that I’ve heard it debunked, I’ll probably relax my defenses and actually enjoy the movie when I see it. After all, some people I love love it. But the multimedia worshipfest was getting on my nerves, so Mr. Vrabel’s piece was a nice change of pace … Just watch, I’ll go see it, and get converted, and be talking about what an awful non-blue meanie he is for writing that…
I thought it was well worth seeing in 3-D simply because of the visual effects. And I don’t think it promotes Animism or Pantheism anymore than Harry Potter promotes witchcraft (which seems to be the Pope’s problem with it). Unfortunately, I can’t help but think that the logical sequel would involve the mean ‘ol military industrial complex (that Pres. Eisenhour warned us about) coming back, nuking Pandora until it was absolutely sterile and glowed in the dark, then sending their mining robots in to harvest the mineral that they were after in the first place. This director goes for sentimentalism and long movies(remember “Titanic?”). So, if you want stark reality with a goodly dose of cynicism, I cannot recommend it.
Yes, we need more critics like him.
Debunked? Don’t you have to have some bunk to start with?
I’ve been reviewing films for 35 years, and here’s the little secret about “Avatar” — IT’S JUST A MOVIE!
I have to ask – do you think Dances With Wolves was too “pro-American Indian”. Was there some grey area in terms of nearly wiping out an entire race of people? I guess the Indians should have been thankful for their American occupiers just like the Iraqis.
“Dances With Wolves” was INSIPID. It was what passes in Hollywood for profound, when it was just insulting. It was drippingly obvious that everyone involved with the project thought they were doing something terribly ground-breaking by having a movie with a sensitive, sympathetic depiction of Indians, which was proof, in case you needed it, that people in Hollywood have the attention spans and cultural memories of goldfish.
If you want to see a movie that actually treats indigenous peoples as fully-realized, three-dimensional PEOPLE, check out Little Big Man. You would think it had been made a generation or two later than “Dances,” because its Indians are so fully human, so far beyond gauzy sentimentality, that they can even have a sense of humor about themselves, instead of constantly posing for their portraits as the Noble Red Men. And yet the Dustin Hoffman vehicle was made 20 years earlier.
And if you want gauzy sentimentality that WORKS, go back to 1971 for “Billy Jack” — a really embarrassingly amateurish movie, but enjoyable for its simple sincerity … and of course the scenes in which Billy Jack kicks some paleface butt…
Billy Jack!??! Wow, that’s a blast from the past. What’s up next, Buford Pusser?
You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna take THIS foot, and…
Seriously, netflix the movie “Black Robe.”
This is one I’m happy to miss.
It was a movie, Brad, not a documentary. I’d like to hear you expound more on what aspects of early American Indian life were not worthy of sympathy and sensitivity?
Americans killed Indians to take their land. Is there some alternate “arrows of mass destruction” theory?
What, you got a problem with Manifest Destiny?
But seriously, folks… “Dances” takes a topic deserving of seriousness and cheapens it by being simplistic, saccharine, and cloying.
You want to see a good Costner movie? See “Tin Cup.” That’s a good match for his talents.
By the way, I’m giving blood as I type this with one thumb…
It only took me 6 minutes to give my pint. Which, as it happens, is almost exactly as long as it took me to type that last comment with one thumb…
I’m in the little snack bar — which is sort of crowded at the moment, which is good — having a Coke…
Interesting that Kathryn just brought up ‘ol Buford Pusser, from “Walking Tall.” Either you’ve mentioned your geographical connection to him before in this blog, or she was doing some channelling, Brad.
Buford was killed/committed suicide/murdered in his red Corvette down the road a bit from your first newspaper. Interesting story, that. His mother used to call our house, drunk, and ramble on for an hour or more about the Southern Mafia “conspiracy,” to my then-wife, Carroll. Much more interesting than the three movies.
On Avatar:
I somehow can’t get into animated heroes or drama, just as reading about dream sequences immediately starts me flipping through pages.
How to empathize with Donald Duck, white & orange, and certainly not blue….
I’ve never seen Dances with Wolves but I might check it out to just to see what all the fuss is about.
As for movies with dripping sentimentality and a completely discredited premise nothing beats the atrocious Green Berets with John Wayne. An atrocious movie. The way it glorifies American imperialism in Vietnam is just disgusting. The main character in the movie, played by a 60 year old John Wayne, is nothing short of a caricature. How many 60 year old Special Forces soldiers are there?
I enjoyed the movie-a lot. Cameron is a technologically creative genius and will most likely(and deservedly so) be rewarded for that.
And, yes, while he did use American Indian history as a source(even had Wes Studi’s voice for the tribal chief), the storyline was essentially a variation of some “Great White Hope” theme (as in Dances w/ Wolves). With one particularly enjoyable exception, the “Indians” beat the “Cowboys”.
But I didn’t leave w/ the impression that Cameron intended for this fantasy movie to be a story about the Original People. The movie is about all of us, not just one race but mankind, and how easily we destroy without consideration.
For the record, I have Native ancestors in my family tree.
“Dances With Wolves” was INSIPID. It was what passes in Hollywood for profound, when it was just insulting.
Could not have said it as well!
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Hunter Brumfield of Tokyo was the editorial page editor of my first newspaper — The Jackson Sun, where I worked for the first decade after I left college.
Hunter and I once went on an epic trip down the Tombigbee River in a canoe, armed with a black-powder Navy revolver and a machete (he had the gun; I had the blade), determined to experience the river before it was “spoiled” by the Tenn-Tom project. It was a successful trip, in the sense that it didn’t turn out like “Deliverance.” And I got a story out of it — one of those weekend readers that journalists like to submit for journalism prizes…
My favorite moment in “Green Berets” is at the end when we see the sun set on the ocean — a pretty good trick in Vietnam, which only has eastern beaches.
Is Tom Bigby the Tennessee equivalent of Ashley Cooper and his sister Sandy?
A few more thoughts about “Indian” movies, if I may.
Movies such as Last of the Mohicans, Little Big Man, and Thunderheart (my personal favorite) are more historically and culturally accurate in their depiction of the Original People and I’d like to see more of these made.
But even the Dances w/ Wolves variety have merit in that they bring awareness to the degradation, racism, and senseless slaughter inflicted upon a race of people (thereby shedding light on a truer version of history than what is presented in textbooks).
Black Robe was one of the most anti-Native films since the old Cowboy & Indians flicks. Jesuits/Christianity=light/goodness- Natives=dark/savage. The American Indian Movement folks were outraged enough to write an 8 page criticism of this one.
#Burl — It’s kind of like when Harry and Sally leave the University of Chicago, which is on the very southern end of Lake Shore Drive heading to New York, which means going south to Indiana and then east. and are next shown driving south down Lake Shore Drive toward the Loop–the central city north of Hyde Park where U of C is. Made a great picture, but Chicagoans laughed out loud at the screening I attended.
It WAS a comedy….
The Indians portrayed in “Black Robe” are pretty tough customers, out for their own best interests, and they’re not the enlightened, starry-eyed Kumbaya tribe depicted by Hollywood feelgooders. (What did you think of the film’s portrayal of Catholic priests?)
If the Indians in BR had instead been guerilla “freedom fighters,” there would not be any squawking.
What was exceptional about the film was the cultural clash itself, about how the various sides focused on their own agendas instead of getting along.
The AIM folks are a lobbying organization. Any film that treats American indigenous peoples as separate tribes in potential competition with each other, instead as an ad hominem party of victims, is naturally going to pique their interest.
Many of the Indians in BR aren’t victims. They’re scary dudes. But not all of them are, and the Europeans are the bringers of misfortune there.
Burl, the clash of cultures in BR was a heavily slanted portrayal of Natives as savages(if my memory is correct that word was used often
by the priests pretty much throughout the movie). And its neo colonialism theme of savagery vs civilization was perhaps a more extreme and distortive depiction than any “starry-eyed Kumbaya” Hollywood feelgood movie has been guilty of. After all, whose version of history was BR based on?
Was there animosity between some tribes? Certainly, but not at the brutalizing levels portrayed in BR.
I mean no disrespect, but the comments about AIM came across as condescending and a tad insulting. The US Govt strategy was essentially theft of the land by genocide and destruction of the Native culture(and spirit). And it almost succeeded. AIM emerged in
the 60’s as a spiritual movement to bring back self-determination and self-reliance to a People who were w/o rights and lacked the power to do something about it. To imply that AIM would endorse victimhood (even in movies) is inaccurate. And to offhandedly refer to it as merely a lobbying organization is dismissive in my humble opinion.