Traditional American Cinema at its Best

On the face of it, Avatar would seem to be a strange example of traditional anything. It is already a phenomenon—enormous box office all over the world, endless stories about the invention of new technologies to create the extraordinary special effects, not to mention the 3D. (A sore trial to this reviewer who has only one eye with adequate vision, as 3D depends for its effectiveness on having a different lens for each eye.) Nevertheless, Avatar’s plot, visual style and themes are in the great tradition of Hollywood narrative cinema.

Conservative critics alarmed by its immense popularity have deplored Avatar’s oblique criticisms of the Iraq war and the film’s condemnation of US imperialism. In fact the writer-director, James Cameron, goes much further. The plot could almost be a science fiction version of Kevin Costner’s pro-Indian western Dances with Wolves minus the pessimistic resolution. In both films protagonists “go native” and identify with the people they are supposed to destroy. Nothing new here; variations of similar themes can be found in Soldier Blue, Little Big Man, A Man Called Horse, not to mention Broken Arrow, only with Avatar the action takes place on another planet while the “Indians” are the Na’vi, a different species, and to infiltrate the tribe our heroes have to acquire magnificent new bodies. Making this at least plausible is arguably the film’s most impressive technical achievement, and wisely to date Cameron seems to be keeping the details of just how he did it under wraps—although knowing him we are all expecting a positively enormous special edition DVD.

It is these sequences that have reportedly had the greatest impact on the film’s viewers. During the scenes showing the “natural” world of the planet—a combination of stunning landscape photography and digital imaging, I suspect—my regular companion leant across and whispered, “This is enchanting”; and indeed it was. Not quite as original for me as it was to her—I am old enough to have seen Fantasia and Bambi on the big screen close to when they were first released. But Avatar outdoes them both, creating a magical world at once perilous and hauntingly beautiful, with the 3D enhancing the imagery rather than being used for cheap effects. (Personally I found viewing the film on the smaller screen of the Odeon Hornsby more satisfying than on the larger screen of the Broadway multiplex; besides, the ambience was better.)

Still, Cameron is making a praiseworthy attempt to enrich the theatrical experience of film-going, and for people with two good eyes Avatar on a big screen is very effective. Both in the “live action” sequences and the digital creations for the planet Pandora he has encouraged cinematographer Mario Fiore and his designers to open out the frame (reportedly a slightly different shape for the 2D and 3D versions) playing off foreground and background, thereby drawing the eyes of the viewer into the projected image to create a richer, more satisfying experience than in the dumbed-down visuals of so much contemporary cinema. Moreover, instead of isolating characters within the frame for endless close-ups Cameron exploits the increased depth of field to allow his actors to interact in traditional two and three shots.

But for all this, is Avatar more than a spectacular reworking of some old Hollywood genres?

Certainly Cameron does evoke memories of westerns and earlier science fiction movies, most notably his own Aliens (1986) which starred Sigourney Weaver as Ripley—arguably the most famous action heroine of twentieth-century cinema. And Weaver—a little older but as impressive as ever—is in Avatar playing a feisty idealistic scientist. (Her presence meant Cameron felt he could not use that fine actor Michael Biehn, who co-starred in the earlier film, as it might remind audiences too much of Aliens.) In addition, the portrayal of a conscienceless “company” greedy for the minerals beneath the Na’vi’s sacred tree is much the same as the “company” who want the monster for their weapons program in the Alien movies.

Avatar also takes over what Cameron called the “grunts in space” from his 1986 film. The director decided that instead of one monster there was going to be a whole planet full of the loathsome creatures. To take on these aliens Cameron had a squad of marines complete with novice officer, hysterical screw-up private, elaborate weaponry and technology ready to break down at the wrong moment, lots of promiscuous firing and of course a level-headed leader to take orders from our heroine. Most of these die heroically. In Avatar, however, the military are power-mad lunatics with even more weaponry borrowed from Cameron’s Terminator franchise and led by Stephen Lang’s deranged Colonel—“I can do it with minimal casualties to the indigenous. We’ll clear them out with gas first. It’ll be humane more or less.” In 1986 it seemed that Cameron was making a Vietnam War film in space, and the same is true of Avatar and Iraq—in Cameron’s words, high-tech wars against low-tech adversaries.

The director too has admitted to reworking the star-crossed lovers from Titanic, with Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully, a “marine of the jarhead tribe”, falling in love with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) the chief’s daughter. James Horner’s score even quotes his love theme from the earlier film. And of course the device was also regularly employed in the western, a point neatly made by Jake Sully: “And who has a date with the chief’s daughter?”

Nevertheless, it is the very familiarity of this material that is Avatar’s greatest strength. Always good with exposition scenes, Cameron begins by establishing the main characters (at least the human ones) and the traditional basic plot in a series of well crafted sequences. Particularly effective is the unsentimental treatment of Jack Sully’s paraplegia—“I’m sick of doctors telling me what I can’t do.” Cameron even manages a sideswipe at President Obama’s opponents on healthcare; Sully’s legs could be fixed but he doesn’t have enough insurance. By the time he is plunged into the magical world of the Na’vi there is little danger viewers will lose their bearings.

Although the life of Pandora is at times outrageously exotic the situations are still familiar from hundreds of other movies. This is why the gloriously excessive multiple climaxes work as well as they do. Unlike Baz Luhrmann, Cameron doesn’t create big moments and leave it at that. In Avatar the spectacular rides to the rescue and hairsbreadth escapes have the whole film behind them and because of that are dramatically and emotionally satisfying. Cameron also nicely undercuts the sentimentality with some typically dry wit. “I was hoping for some kind of tactical plan that didn’t involve martyrdom,” remarks Michelle Rodriguez’s tough girl marine.

As for the film’s politics, Avatar is undeniably in the liberal tradition of American film-making, a tradition that brought us such films as The Grapes of Wrath, Wild Boys of the Road and Platoon. Criticising the film for its liberalism is about as sensible as rejecting works like Red River or She Wore a Yellow Ribbon because their values happen to be conservative.

Clint Eastwood’s Invictus seems to come from the long line of American sporting films that gave us dialogue like “Let’s win this one for the Gipper” and where the fortunes of the team, the college, the town, depend on the outcome of a series of games. The form is nearly as stereotyped as the western: the scenes in the locker rooms, plots built around whether the star player can convince his/her girl or boy friend, family, coach, sometimes all three, to let him/her play, plus of course, their last-minute arrival on the eve of the big game. It may be familiar but the genre works. Just watch Oliver Stone play themes and variations on all the standard plot devices in On Any Given Sunday. It is even better when it’s based on a true story, which is of course what make Invictus so interesting.

Woven together are the fortunes of post-apartheid South Africa, a national rugby union team and Nelson Mandela, just out of jail and the country’s first black president. One would have thought the story of how he used the 1995 World Cup to unite black and white South Africa would have been a natural for any number of film-makers.

However, getting the story on the screen turned out to be more complicated. Originally Morgan Freeman was to play Mandela in a film adaptation of his memoir A Long Walk to Freedom, an idea suggested by Mandela himself. Consequently Freeman was able to spend a lot of time with the man as one screenplay after another was prepared and discarded as too unwieldy—not surprising as the book describes the two treason trials, the twenty-seven years in prison and the complicated negotiations that led to Mandela’s release and election as president. Finally Freeman was forced to withdraw but not before he had collected some great material.

Then John Carlin, a British journalist who had covered Mandela in the 1990s, came up with a proposal for a book that became Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation. Carlin met Freeman, who promptly bought the rights then persuaded his old friend Clint Eastwood to direct. Anthony Peckham, an expatriate South African, wrote the script. Mandela had been a non-person in white South Africa when Peckham was growing up, so for Mandela’s voice he relied on the book and transcripts of the President’s hostile cross-examination by the counsel for South African Rugby at the Royal Commission set up in 1998 to investigate why black South Africans were still not being selected for the national teams.

The film-makers knew they had the right approach when before going into production Freeman and producer Lori McCreary flew to South Africa to get Mandela’s approval. “Madiba,” said Freeman, using the former president’s honorary clan title, “we’ve been working a long time on this other project, but we’ve just read something we think might get to the core of who you are …” “Ah,” interrupted Mandela, “the World Cup.”

The film opens with the newly inaugurated President looking for ways to reconcile the embittered white minority to a newly democratic South Africa. And from the outset Eastwood and Peckham let us know what Mandela is up against. The first scene shows whites playing rugby on an immaculately kept lawn while in the field opposite black boys are playing soccer. A motorcade drives past; the Africans rush to the fence chanting, “Mandela, Mandela.” On the other side of the road the white coach explodes: “Remember, boys, this is the day our country went to the dogs.” As we know, the President came up with the idea of embracing the Springboks national rugby team, adored by the Afrikaners and hated in equal measure by most non-white South Africans as a symbol of white oppression. Mandela then used his considerable powers of persuasion to set the team’s captain, Francois Pienaar, the seemingly impossible goal of winning the World Cup.

All this is portrayed in a series of beautifully crafted and played sequences that do indeed seem to get to the heart of what Mandela was to himself and his country. Morgan Freeman gives the performance of his life as the great man. According to New York Times reporter Bill Keller, who studied Mandela during this time, “Mr Freeman’s performance in the film … [is] less an impersonation than an incarnation.” Mandela is never sentimentalised. It is made quite clear that Mandela is supporting the Springboks because the white minority controls most of the country’s wealth, and uniting the country behind the Springboks is the best way to reconcile blacks and whites to the new democratic South Africa. Much of this is portrayed through the emotional journey of Matt Damon’s Pienaar. Although their relationship remains formal, a bond develops between this very conservative Afrikaner and a president who is everything Pienaar’s tiresome family hates. Just before the final he even arranges for his team to visit Robben Island, where Mandela was imprisoned.

According to Peter FitzSimons, who reported on the 1995 series, good as Damon is here the script lets him down in the scenes where he has to rally his team-mates: “Captains of football teams in those situations don’t speak like that.” But if Peckham’s dialogue does less than justice to the colourful language of footballers under stress, the film doesn’t make the mistake of sentimentalising the Springboks. A telling scene shows many of the Springboks refusing to sing South Africa’s new national anthem, and it is clear that only a single token black has been selected for the series. However, Invictus does omit the Springboks’ worst display of racism. According to FitzSimons, the player who scored the winning try, the only Jewish member of the team, was introduced at the post-match press conference as “our Jew boy”.

The film’s rugby scenes have been criticised by experts like FitzSimons for not capturing what the game is all about. “It seems to be made by film-makers who don’t quite understand what rugby means to those of us who have played the game.” In fairness they did try. Damon was coached by Chester Williams, the token black Springbok in the 1995 side, and Eastwood and his collaborators welcomed all the advice they could get. But, Peter insists, this is no substitute for the kind of involvement in the game Oliver Stone achieved in On Any Given Sunday.

With the greatest respect to FitzSimons—a valued friend and colleague—Invictus is not about the rugby, but about Nelson Mandela and South Africa; and here the film succeeds magnificently. We are never allowed to forget that along with the decency and compassion Mandela is a wily politician with a delightful sense of mischief. He flirts relentlessly with his very attractive principal aide, played by the stylish British actress Adjoa Andoh, and at a formal reception he looks as though he would like to go somewhat further with one of his dancing partners, a beautiful, well-endowed African lady: “I am myself not polygamous but I wish I was when I meet someone as beautiful as you.”

Above all, the film portrays Mandela’s insistence on forgiveness—“It is the most powerful weapon we have”—an extraordinary sentiment to appear in a work by a director who has so often celebrated revenge. Is Eastwood mellowing, or is this simply fidelity to his material? Certainly working with his usual cinematographer, Tom Stern, he directs with great authority in a rich visual style that, while never obtrusive, opens out the frame so viewers can appreciate every detail of the interactions between the characters while giving full weight to the superbly written dialogue in Peckham’s expertly crafted screenplay. It may seem strange to compare Eastwood at this stage of his career with giants of the film medium such as Jean Renoir or William Wyler, but on the evidence of Changeling, Gran Torino and now Invictus that is where he belongs.

Neil McDonald writes: I am grateful to Peter FitzSimons for his recollections of the 1995 World Cup. The background to the making of Invictus comes from Bill Keller’s article “An Actor Nails the Cadence and the Charm” in the New York Times. For a more critical view of Springbok captain Francois Pienaar see Peter FitzSimons’s The Rugby War (HarperCollins 1996).