Jeff Wells points us to this article by Manohla Dargis at the New York Times about Avatar’s breakthrough technology:
When it was over, people broke into enthusiastic applause and, unusually, many stayed to watch the credits, as if to linger in the movie. Although much has been made of the technologies used in “Avatar,” its beauty and nominal politics, it is the social experience of the movie — as an event that needs to be enjoyed with other people for maximum impact — which is more interesting. That’s particularly true after a decade when watching movies became an increasingly solitary affair, something between you and your laptop. “Avatar” affirms the deep pleasures of the communal, and it does so by exploiting a technology (3-D), which appears to invite you into the movie even as it also forces you to remain attentively in your seat.
And more:
You can get lost in a movie, or so it seems, and melt into its world. But even when seated third row center and occupying two mental spaces, you understand that you and the movie inhabit separate realms. When I watched “The Dark Knight” in Imax, I felt that I was at the very edge of the screen. “Avatar,” in 3-D, by contrast, blurs that edge, closing the space between you and the screen even more. Like a video game designer, Mr. Cameron seems to want to invite you into the digital world he has created even if, like a film director, he wants to determine your route. Perched between film and digital, “Avatar” shows us a future in which movies will invite us further into them and perhaps even allow us to choose not just the hero’s journey through the story, but also our own.
Wells also starts up the Best Picture talk:
The four main reasons are (a) the lasting emotional wow, (b) the way it seems to have re-energized the moviegoing experience through 3D (which will henceforth be a potent exhibition attraction), (c) the Alexander-ish worldwide box-office domination and (d) the immensely satisfying depiction of the defeat of Bush-Cheney corporate militarism (and the right-wing blogger fury that has resulted). Eat shit, right-wing assholes!
He also says to tell him if he’s wrong about its status. Here is what I think about it. The actors dominate the Academy. The actors by and large don’t like being replaced by special effects. Others have suggested bitterness towards cocky and arrogant Cameron will keep voters back. Still others are carrying out a very clever whisper campaign against the movie, emphasizing the weakness of the story. This most famously happened when everyone thought Saving Private Ryan was a done deal. The whisper campaign, supposedly generated by Miramax, but who knows, started with the truth, that Ryan’s third act was a mushy mess. Although I loved Shakespeare in Love and agree that it was the better movie, had I been Oscar watching then I probably would have supporting Saving Private Ryan for the win.
That Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan tells me one thing for sure (or at least I think it’s for sure). The women vote made the difference. As much as I loathed the Spielberg film’s last third, I know that most people had no problem with it. In fact, they loved the movie. Could it be that women just go for the good old fashioned love story? And might this also help Avatar overcome the “but the story sucks” stuff? I realize I’m putting Avatar in the Shakespeare in Love seat, and that wasn’t my intention at all.
My point was merely to say that no, technology and exciting filmmaking doesn’t necessarily make a Best Pic winner. The actors make a difference. The women, small of a percentage that they are, make a difference. The BAFTA makes a difference now.
But let’s just talk about something that has been gnawing at me for a while now. The female reaction to Avatar. There is definitely a sense I get that Avatar is not a “fanboy” movie. It isn’t the movie young men are chomping at the bit to go back and see. Women seem to really dig it in a big way (and why wouldn’t they) – this is due partly to Cameron’s own history of putting women in the driver’s seat, making them powerful and pointing the universal power at a female rather than a male source.
In all of his films, women rule. If they aren’t the heroes going in, they certainly have a formidable role in how the film turns out. Aliens for sure. T2. But none so obviously as with Avatar, where you have a hero who is essentially ineffectual until he transforms his body into another. You also have a strong female source of goddess power that most films today are too afraid to touch.
Why? Because for the past decade, the overall theme of most blockbusters has benn to aim them at 13 year-old boys. Fear of box office failure has conditioned studios and audiences to expect one kind of thing from gigantic effects movies like this. And women are usually dressed up in sexy outfits, doing a kung-fu move here or there, but to have a film’s center be based on the female nature goddess? You have to be Jim Cameron to pull that off.
But it’s been interesting to me watching the men kind of squirm under the weight of Avatar’s success. I’m not generalizing and saying all men; clearly a large portion also respond to Avatar and if they aren’t responding to it, they’re most certainly going to see the effects.
And not all girls respond to it. Of the four 11 and 12 year-olds I took to see it, only my daughter (of course) loved it and wanted to see it again. The others were kind of like, MEH. So we can’t make sweeping generalizations. However, I think it’s worth noting that, for the first time in a very long time, a giant effects movie is strong on the girl power.
Finally, Avatar’s Best Picture chances. If the voters need a deeper connection to the characters they will go for Up in the Air. If they need something more serious and hard-hitting, or if they want to honor a woman, they will choose The Hurt Locker. Inglourious Basterds in the wild card pick and of course, if those three films split the vote Basterds might have enough of a following to squeak by, thus Tom O’Neil’s Oscar theory could prove true.