Go. See. Avatar.
Of course, we are all being told that we have to see “Avatar:” It’s been over a decade in the making; it’s the next big thing in director James Cameron’s oeuvre; it’s going to fundamentally change how movies are made. None of that really matters to me, though. I went to see “Avatar” because my friend, Balsam, emailed me saying it’s the first movie she’d seen with “actual co-creative ideas and moments in it.” She’s right.
The Na’Vi (the blue people living on the planet Pandora, which the U.S. military industrial complex is raping and destroying in pursuit of money and fuel) communicate consciously (and co-creatively) with the plants and animals that share the planet, and all living things on the planet communicate with each other through a co-creative energetic network. (At times during the film, I longed to hop up from my seat, jump through the screen and join the Na’Vi tribe — oh, to be surrounded by others who see, hear and honor the Nature that runs through all of life!) In addition to the Pandoran people, I was also captivated by the plant, mineral and animal life on the animated planet — the artists clearly studied the natural forms on our planet and used them as creative fuel for inventing new species on Pandora. Again, Balsam summed it up beautifully when she wrote that the artists had “the wits and humility” to be inspired by Nature’s “proportions and organization.” Exactly! While watching the movie, I could imagine myself actually walking through the forest, flying beneath the floating landforms, and catching a luminous seed pod in the palm of my hand — precisely because there was an underlying shared organization with the natural forms with which I am surrounded on Earth. (And, it sure does take humility to realize that we cannot “do it better” than Nature.)
After leaving the movie, I found myself wishing for more. I wish that the more enlightened humans’ understanding of the Pandoran co-creative energetic network had been deeper; I wish that the Na’Vi hadn’t battled in such human ways; I wish that I’d seen more about how the plants grew and the animals feasted and less about how missiles devastate. However, this movie is not just for me — it’s for those who are heading in my direction, co-creatively speaking. My true wish is that moviegoers see (through those goofy black plastic glasses) that we don’t have to go all the way to Pandora to discover a network of life awaiting our connection. We’ve got one right here, right now. Let’s just not blow the darn thing to pieces, please?
