First and foremost, what an amazingly breathtaking movie Avatar is.
Director James Cameron (of Titanic fame) has, in my opinion,
really raised the bar for what the future of movie viewing will now be.
This is a real game changer. The cinematic beauty and visual detail alone fills the senses
in a way not quite experienced before. Add to this the element of 3D and you have a paradigm-shifting film.
But the power of Avatar does not lie in its visual effects; it lies in the story.
This is not a 3D movie, but an amazingly beautiful, poignant story and cinematic journey that happens to be in 3D.
For me, what makes this movie experience so fulfilling is the spiritual essence that the story of Avatar contains.
Without going into too much plot detail, Earthlings have found an inhabited moon called Pandora
that contains an abundance of life and a wealth of natural resources, just prime for the taking.
The indigenous humanoid life forms on Pandora are known as the Navi, blue 10-foot aboriginal beings
that share a very close connection with the land.
This connection is not to be taken lightly for it is the essence of their existence on Pandora.
Humans, through bio-technology have developed Avatar host bodies who look almost identical to the Navi.
These Avatars can be controlled by DNA-linked humans through a remote harmonized synaptic connection,
thereby allowing them to interact with the natives directly. Of course things become problematic
when the need for the Navi to protect the land goes head-to-head with human shareholder interests
to excavate and pillage the rich planetary resources abundant on the planet.
This of course is not a new theme, and I recognize some similarities to another great movie, Dances With Wolves.
But the true power of this epic tale lies in understanding the spiritual connection that the Navi have with its planet
and all things contained in it, and the balance created when people respect and honor the land
and its resources vs. the misguided and disconnected notion of supreme ownership, entitlement and conquest.
There are some movie critics who make the assertion that Avatar reeks of a pagan,
pantheistic focus on spirituality. While this is an interesting interpretation,
these critics clearly do not get the significance or importance of what this movie is trying to convey.
It is about how maintaining a harmonic balance between sentient beings
and their surroundings is a key ingredient to spiritual upliftment. This is only one of the many messages
that Avatar imparts.
The connection to the planet and its resources shown very literally in this movie is an allegory
to the actual literal connection that everyone in fact has to the earth, to all living things,
and to the universe as a whole; we have simply forgotten this connection exists.
Read the full article by Darrell Johnson here:
http://awakento1.blogspot.de/2010/01/i-see-you-avatars-spiritual-essence.html
