David Quinn: Spirituality is real reason behind Avatar's success
Actors Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana, as her digital character Neytiri, in a scene from 'Avatar' - the highest grossing film of all time
Friday January 29 2010
It's official: 'Avatar' is now the highest grossing film of all time. This week it passed out another of James Cameron's offerings, 'Titanic', to occupy the top slot. What do both films have in common? Spectacle. What else do they have in common? A very simple story with cartoonish, black and white, cardboard cut-out characters.
Actually, it's too easy to pick holes in 'Avatar', for its story, its politics, its philosophy. It's so easy you wouldn't even bother, except for the fact that so many people have seen it, and then seen it again.
The story rips off 'Pocahontas' and 'Dances with Wolves'. The politics is essentially anti-capitalist and anti-American. (The villains are obviously American even if they're not directly identified as such.) The philosophy is a mix of New Age environmentalism and the myth of the Noble Savage contrasted with the corruption of the 'civilised' white man.
But there is another aspect to the film and this goes some way towards explaining its gigantic popularity, and that is the fact that 'Avatar' is essentially a religious film, even if Cameron might not have intended it as such.
Other commentators have made the same observation, including film director John Boorman. The other day he wrote: "Perhaps the key (to its success) is the marine in the wheelchair. He is disabled, but Mr Cameron and technology can transport him into the body of a beautiful, athletic, sexual, being. After all, we are all disabled in one way or another; inadequate, old, broken, earthbound. Pandora is a kind of heaven where we can be resurrected and connected instead of disconnected and alone.
He told us not to overlook this religious dimension of the film.
Even the movie's name, 'Avatar', is religious. It is borrowed from Hinduism. An avatar is a deity who has descended from heaven to earth in a borrowed form -- a fish, a lion, a boar, a human. Our marine friend may not be a deity, but he does take on a new form, a much better form, the form of a 10-foot-tall blue alien. Even the blue may not be coincidental. Avatars in Indian mythology are sometimes blue.
A reviewer in the Vatican newspaper, 'L'Osservatore Romano', noted the religious aspect as well, but he didn't much care for it.
The reviewer complained that the movie "gets bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature".
He's right, but he's also missing the point. He should be delighted that audiences in the West, and mostly young, secularised audiences at that, are flocking to see a movie that's religious, even if it's not religious in a way the reviewer liked.
So, how exactly is it religious? Well, what does religion mean? It means 'to bind', or to connect, and these aliens couldn't be more connected. They are connected to each other and to the world they live in through their deity, the All-Mother, whose spirit dwells in the Soul-Tree that the villainous humans are trying to destroy at the end of the movie.
Their religion gives them a transcendent reference point. It gives them a sense of meaning and purpose. It gives them a moral code embedded in their respect or reverence for nature. They have developed customs and rituals to show this respect. All of these elements, put together, are exactly what constitute and make up a religion.
And their religion also makes them whole, which is what is really meant by the word 'salvation'. They are, therefore, without sin. These aliens don't need saving because they are already saved. They are already, as John Boorman says, in 'a kind of heaven'.
This is why we share the horror of the Na'vi as the very heart of their religion is being attacked. We know that if their religion is destroyed, they will be destroyed. We might not care when someone attacks or blasphemes against Christianity because we think Christians and Christianity deserve it. Sometimes they do. But the Na'vi, they don't deserve it because they are still pure.
We know that if the humans win, the aliens will become disconnected from their world, disconnected from each other, disconnected from their deity.
In short, they'll become like us. Their world will become disenchanted. They will begin to war on each other. They'll be at war with nature. They'll forget about God. They will no longer be whole. They'll no longer be saved. They will have experienced the Fall, except this time it will not be self-inflicted, it will be inflicted by us who are already fallen.
'Avatar' isn't a profound movie, but in its own superficial way it deals with profound things -- indeed, the profoundest thing of all: religion.
The reason it appeals so strongly to so many people is that deep down, and despite appearances to the contrary, we are still religious and we like the religion we see in 'Avatar'.
We like it, because we want it, because we need it, because we all want to be saved.
- David Quinn
Irish Independent
