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bracket according to James Cameron

After a list of the best of the decade, we must move to what is touted as the next future, this long-awaited revolution, the culmination of the 3D movie happens to us after many beginnings of which date from the early ... 1890! There is a history on this old wikipedia for those interested, saying only that the interest in 3D does not date from yesterday. Today, however, the pressure is strong for this new device is adopted and the reason, though implicit, is simple: to counter piracy. What is the interest download Avatar , regardless of the quality of the copy, and listen to it on a flat screen, while the interest lies in the effect of immersion due not only to 3D, but the size Screen?

Besides, is not the only interest? Even the hardiest fans admit the thinness of the scenario Avatar , however, preferring to describe simple rather than simplistic. I do not want to dwell on this scenario, anyway the interest is elsewhere. It is true that for Cameron also the story is secondary, it appears itself as a pretext: the viewer is like the main character, nailed to his chair and the discovery of a New World, the digital and 3D. For Cahiers du Cinema , we elaborate much on this idea: "That is what is beautiful and moving tale in this simple: observe the color chart that away or close his paraplegic hero, Jake Sully (in real images) of Jakesully (computer graphics), his "avatar", that is to say the body of Na'vi it invests. It is basically the force of Avatar , whose story is based on the desire to get rid of something old (the optical image) to dive into a new reality (in synthetic images) [...] A little later, the editor speaks of these crowded human weight of the real (heavy equipment, prosthetics) contrasts with the fluidity and flexibility of the approach Na'vi, so digital. Unfortunately, this is perhaps the only idea of staging and quickly running out of steam - I will return. It develops a little more the same concept in Chronicart , we're going to Baudrillard mention the turning of a phrase in an attempt to inject a little sense. But what exactly does it exactly here: "The great tension until some formal crossing-mutant movie yesterday stemmed in large part to a disconnect ontological design computer graphics is in 3D, when the object film is inherently a 2D translation of reality. By injecting this little world in the same engine design, moving from a paper material to their communion, James Cameron comes to justify the Christian name of his cameras: Fusion. "What formal tensions? For several years it boasts just the opposite, the ability to integrate digital film, or computer graphics to be perfectly realistic (or even all that was said about the special effects District 9, the spacecraft towering over Johannesburg in particular). It is also wrong to claim that cinema is a 2D translation of reality: since when was abolished perspective?



I do not want my nostalgic nostalgic (already!) of a 2D film (of course that the prospect is not as immersive as the 3D of Avatar ), but this self-proclaimed revolution is far from being reached. The problem is not technological, or rather one can easily forget the moments technically less convincing as the advance is large and impressive. The effect of immersion is strong in the opening minutes, there is no doubt, and in general the 3D technology is very successful (with a few moments I had the impression of watching 2D stacked without roundness, but overall there is a real sense of depth that gives us, yes, the impression of feeling Pandora). Thence to conclude, as in Chronicart that Cameron finally reached the myth of total cinema bazinien, by this single technical success is understanding Bazin so very limited.

But precisely return to Bazin seems essential here to understand what is wrong Avatar , from founding of his essays, which obviously that the total cinema. "Their imagination [precursor film] identifies the idea to film a full and complete representation of reality, it plans to start the restoration of a perfect illusion of the outside world with sound, color and relief. For Bazin, the idea of cinema before his invention, the convergence of technologies in the 19th century that led to the birth of cinema is explained by the "myth of origins", that "an integral realism, a recreation of the world in its image, an image that would not weigh the mortgage on the freedom of interpretation of the artist or the irreversibility of time. "It is the culmination of the history of art, especially painting, that Bazin said in his famous Ontology of the photographic image : perfectly faithful reproduction of reality, it is a victory over death and time. With Avatar , does not it get closer to the complete sham, do not you push the ontological realism one step further? Bazin also wrote that "a film historian, P. Potoniée, has even been argued that this is not the discovery of photography but of stereoscopy [...] who opened the eyes of researchers. " With Avatar , we see the first steps, the humble beginnings of the total cinema?


Many critics refer Avatar the beginnings of cinema by giving back l’image en mouvement son statut de spectacle inédit ( ici et ici entre autres). Au New Yorker , ce spectacle est si prenant qu’il suffit à pardonner tous les écarts idéologiques : « But let’s not dwell on the sentimentality of Cameron’s notion of aboriginal life—the movie is striking enough to make it irrelevant. Nor is there much point in lingering over the irony that this anti-technology message is delivered by an example of advanced technology that cost nearly two hundred and fifty million dollars to produce; or that this anti-imperialist spectacle will invade every available theatre in the world. Relish, instead, the pterodactyls, or the flying velociraptors, or whatever They Are-large beasts Beaky, Green With yellow patches reptile-and the bright-red flying monster jaws With That Could Snap year oak. "Afterwards, we will try to convince us that the critics do not swallow anything when it is coated with a soothing aesthetic ... Finally, it will be understood that the important thing is the spectacle, the show just a digital world perfectly credible and realistic, it's as if the train again Ciotat Station went out of the screen to come to crush us, except this time the illusion is almost perfect, the train actually comes out of the screen.

Is it that this world imagined but realistic thanks to the technique is essentially bazinienne, or rather do Bazin in his texts merely celebrating a technical realism? No, of course, but read the reviews, you'd think that today is all that matters: Cameron just give us a perfect illusion, and this flora purple neon is so beautiful that nothing else we interested. I am the first to applaud the technology, but for now it serves absolutely nothing, a total vacuum, which is rather surprising for a film brought to celebrate its own depth.

Kitsch, you say?

Essentially, the problem is one of staging. The Ontology of the photographic image ends with this sentence: "On the other hand, the cinema is a language. "So after having analyzed the technology of mechanical reproduction of reality in a photographic image, we Bazin emphasizes that this simple realism of the image, this ontology is not in itself an art, he must also there is something to express, to communicate. There is a language supposed to and allowed by this ontology that must honor its aesthetic propositions (or rather, ethical). Bazin is anyway very clear, he defends the realism is primarily an ethical position: "The quarrel over realism in art stems from this misunderstanding, confusion between the aesthetic and psychological, between the true realism which is needed to express the meaning of both practical and essential in the world, and the pseudo-realism of trompe l'oeil (or wrong-mind) which is satisfied with the illusion of form. "Ah, the illusion of forms, is not the most accurate expression to define avatar? The meaning of the world, where to find it in Cameron?

Be more pragmatic: a change of medium requires a new language, a revolution can only gets heavier the language of the past. In terms of staging, Avatar is realized as any Hollywood blockbuster, with more panache of course, but without any real inventiveness. Why use the language of 2D film to 3D? At least Cameron avoids throwing objects toward the spectator or playing on such effects bumpers, 3D is used primarily in a spirit of immersion, travel, to explore fully Pandora. The biggest flaw of staging remains the lack of depth of field, a very strange decision considering that the entire film asks us to enter the picture. Why shoot the shot / reverse discussions by the focus on the characters in the foreground, leaving the background blurry? The contemporary Hollywood films seem all shot in telephoto, it overwrites the prospect as possible, everything is flat. Instead of taking advantage of 3D to return to a scene taking advantage of the depth of field, Cameron imitates his contemporaries by providing a flat and smooth implementation, without depth, where everything happens first. Then there really, why 3D? As such, the comparison with Citizen Kane is ironic: we read everywhere that Avatar mark the history of cinema as the film of Welles in his time (we all know there is a preliminary and AD), but the force of Welles is precisely to have reinvented the cinematic language by developing the use of depth of field. Welles's film was revolutionary, he overthrew the past to reconstruct the language, so that Avatar is simply an evolution, a new exploit technique. From a perspective of language, the staging, Cameron is still very conservative, he will even deny that however should have been a feature of this new technology, the depth. (Jim Emerson also tackles the problem here, with a view (pun intended) more scientific.)

Note that no images published here offers a depth of field ...

This problem goes back further depth to Bazin, this time in his Mounting prohibited : "The specific film, once asked for pure lies instead in mere compliance of the photographic unit of space. "Or:" The realism here lies in the homogeneity of space. "Essentially, Bazin advocates long shot depth of field, this type of plan is more realistic as film, editing faking reality. But Bazin also said that the assembly can be reality, the perfect movie would not necessarily Warhol's Sleep, it's all about using the assembly without interfering with the real, respecting its integrity. The homogeneity of space, Cameron cares not evil, then well as his film is a new space frontier.

Roger Dean vs. James Cameron

In fact, the representation of Pandora is consistent and Cameron is applied to make more intelligible space than the average producers (especially in the scenes action). The exploratory dimension of the film is even quite successful, despite the kitschy colors, the idealism of the world represented, the retro psychedelic-70's-Roger Dean very dated. Critics of Cahiers is fair enough in this regard, 3D allows Pandora to live, to make a sensory experience all the more strong that it goes through a character who discovers, at the same time that we, the brilliant beauties (the phrase is too strong: it is difficult to really marvel at the plants that mimic luminaries IKEA). It is also the moment when the character is in an ambiguous world, but men always attracted Na'vi is the moment of transition, moving from one state to another. As we have noted about Elephant and Still Life, those moments of transitions are the essence of cinema is to grasp the changing reality. However, this section is less tourist-third of the film, a half hour or forty minutes at most, there are around two hours during which Cameron abandons this mise en scene. After Jake was accepted by the tribe Na'vi after his initiation, interest is gradually declining, it remains only to watch flatly align forces to the final confrontation. Moreover, the problem of otherness is so touched that this transition seems almost indifferent. Jake is accepted without difficulty Na'vi in a few days are enough to tame their culture (and his new body). It must be said that Na'vi themselves are a people inherently uninteresting: if the concept of otherness is not affected is that the very idea of difference seems to exist for the aborigines of Cameron as their company is one of communion and coexistence. They live in perfect harmony between themselves and their environment and this, so banal material. The link between Pandora and its inhabitants is not spiritual, it is not pantheism as has been said ( here and here ) Since it is never a question of faith, Pandora is actually and undoubtedly a large network in which all elements are interrelated. In fact, and it joined the remark of the critic of The New Yorker, Cameron boasts a primitive nature and the joys of wildlife by presenting them as a gigantic technological network where all beings are equipped with fiber optic end of their tail ...

This leads to a more serious problem revealed by the text of the Journal, but that ignores the criticism: "As such, the end, which records the passing from one body to another, speaks volumes about the utopia of a cinema freed its physical constraints and the physical reality of the real world, definitely out. This farewell to the incompleteness of the real Cameron formula in a beautiful image: that of the Neytiri Na'vi, holding in her arms the body weakened by Jake, humanity puny in comparison with the athletic body of his beloved. "So we said Cameron? Avatar is not only a celebration of digital, but an outright paean to escape, fleeing in another place. The message is clear: men and their (our) reality are irrelevant, the spectacle offered by the idealized Na'vi serves as a loophole, we must leave our daily disabled, forget to live Pandora (it's not surprising then to hear testimony of suicidal wanting reborn into the world of Cameron, as of Jake is also increasingly dependent on his body avatar.) Already, if the concept of otherness was the least bit worked, this merger would have appeared in the digital less problematic, but here we are faced with a fascist About cancellation of difference, of communion with the world silly. We must not only escape from reality, we must in addition to leave for an undifferentiated world.


Escape, entertainment, these are words typically antibaziniens and, in my opinion, anticinématographiques. The universe of Cameron wants an aside of reality, he lives in parallel, without ever touching him. This is not about fantasy, imaginary worlds can reflect reality, you only think about the work of Terry Gilliam. The problem is not more to digital, it is not a poor or a bad substitute for real (special effects can be used to reveal the live action and animation ditto), it is rather a way of looking at movies that, instead of being full, like 3D suggests, is literally zero. The total cinema is a perfect reproduction of reality, it can not be an attempt to escape this reality. I was wondering where to find the highest meaning of the world at Cameron: There is no answer because the whole project of Avatar is to reject this world, to recreate a new one on new bases, hence the resumption of the founding myth of Pocahontas, whose end has obviously been changed. The reference to Iraq or about environmentalists do not change anything until these ideas are vague and undeveloped, with no depth should we say, and as the solution to the erasure of difference is inconsequential to this world . Cameron proposes simply to escape to a better world (?), By the grace of digital reality, there remains only the illusion of shapes, trompe l'oeil. Even Oz, after all, was not so different from the world of Dorothy, despite the colors.

It remains to consider whether to consider the future of 3D in this purely spectacular and evasive Avatar trace does the future? I feel more "formal tensions" mentioned in Chronicart Avatar in the movies that precede it, so the language and directed from the past contradict the technology of the future. If 3D is considered only by its spectacular appearance, he should stop talking about cinema, whether it is a new medium, to differentiate the cinema as television should be, or if s' acts of what Bazin called the total cinema, that is to say is that this technology continues there in the original myth substantially closer? Avatar stands somewhere between these two poles, hence its relative failure. Bazin, to finish with him, writes of Citizen Kane (in Evolution of film language ): "[...] the depth of field reintroduces the ambiguity in the structure of the image, if not a necessity [...], at least as a possibility. Therefore it is no exaggeration to say that Citizen Kane is inconceivable that depth of field. The uncertainty which remains one of the key spiritual or interpretation is first recorded in the same drawing of the image. "Just the opposite of Avatar finally, which can be projected on screen as traditional 2D and 3D on screen or on IMAX 3D, where the depth of field assumed by the medium is denied by the staging, which confines 3D to the rank of fun and expensive gadget, the link to make it the logical extension of the film, as could be the sound and depth of field (the conclusion of Bazin's article cited).