Avatar is a mesmerizing experience as it transports you into a different world that even the wildest imagination could not have fathomed. A flamboyant splash of colors, in a distant enticing planet-Pandora that lights up in the night with fluorescent, vibrant and colorful flora and fauna enchant you endlessly throughout the movie. Beauty, love, courage, redemption and sacrifice elegantly clothe the storyline behind the spell binding visual feast that meets the eye.
As visually stunning as it is, Avatar also invokes strong religious parallels such as transmigration of soul (except that, here it can happen several times within a lifetime albeit with the help of technology), universal energy that permeates everything on the planet, communication with ancestors (common in Eastern religions) and not to forget the very name itself which has been borrowed from Hinduism and means ‘coming down’ of the divine. It is also interesting that it has been released during Christmas eve that celebrates the ‘incarnation’ of Jesus Christ who ‘took upon’ human form to redeem the created world.
Different audiences around the world have responded differently. While the movie has definitely sparked tremendous interest and awe among it’s Western audiences(1) in the innovative new movie making technology and the zest for environmental protection among others , audiences in the East (cradle of six major non-Judeo-Christian religions) are particularly inspired by the heavy borrowing of ideals from their philosophy (as reflected in this sample review that begins with the question, “When does a film become a philosophy?)(2) . The word ‘Avatar’ easily reminds them of the nine avatars of the Lord Vishnu who ‘comes down’ in different ‘avatars’ whenever evil abounds on earth. His tenth avatar as ‘Kalki’ is eagerly awaited where he is expected to destroy all evil after it reaches it’s peak. And the main Avatar of the movie does take on the mandate of fighting and restraining the bad ‘sky people’.
Despite the differing reasons that different audiences are attracted to it, few underlying elements of the film connect universally with every viewer. As the old adage goes, ‘a thing of beauty is a joy forever’. The visual casting of Pandora as a ‘beautiful planet’ draws the audience to want to leap and jump along with the main characters of the movie as they run (and fly on colorful dragons).
Is there hope for the Earth to be restored to it’s original elegance? Is the earth doomed to destruction? Why? Is it man’s unquenched greed for ‘more’ at any cost without due concern for the ‘have-nots’ in the world? As one ponders through these questions, two images from the Bible come to mind. One is that of the Garden of Eden and the rest of the world after it was created and ought to have been unimaginably beautiful (if even God who reviewed it gave it an ‘A’ calling it ‘good’). The other is that of the ‘new heavens and new earth’ that is expected to happen in the future. The events that happen between these two is what the Bible talks about. It attempts to explain the root cause of all this erosion, not just in the environment but also within the nature of man that causes him to be selfish, greedy, proud and arrogant in combination with his tremendous capability to exert ‘dominion’ over the world.
As man would not be able to wriggle himself out of this mess, God chose to come down as an incarnation, not to kill but to die and come back alive overcoming death. He definitely merits a consideration.
1 http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/avatar/ which has an impressive 83% score for the movie
2 http://beta.thehindu.com/arts/movies/article66463.ece?homepage=true for a review by ‘The Hindu’ – a major South Indian Newspaper.
