I saw Avatar in 3D night before last at the IMAX in London. I'm probably one of the last people to see it, but there you go. It was worth it though. I'm not generally over-excited by visual effects. And films where people often rave about the visual effects don't often impress me. I had seen the trailer to Avatar and wasn't that amazed seeing it on TV. But since friends recommended it, and since seeing a 3D demo of a Belly Dancing tutorial in 3D(!) at a Soho Post Production company recently and being curiously surprised by how amazing 3D could be, I decided to book a seat at a late night screening of Avatar at the UK largest's screen.
It's the first film I have been actually excited about seeing in 3D. 20 years ago when I first watched 3D films it was just a bit of a gimmick. Not having watched Avatar in 3D, I really felt like I was watching a film for the first time. I always remember reading about the Lumiere Brothers film Arrival of a train (1896), which simply shows a train arriving at a station, and how some of the audience members had jumped out of the way as the train approached. They hadn't yet become accustomed to watching a film and how the illusion of the perspective can trick you into thinking something 2D is 3D.
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Avatar for me is 21st century equivalent of Arrival of a Train except it is arrival of a train assaulting your senses about every 15 seconds for over 2 hours. And despite the absolutely mind-blowing effects throughout the film, the thing that was most significant for me was the fact that the 3D made me feel like there was a stronger intimacy between me and the world of the characters. It wasn't that I was suddenly amazed by seeing objects protruding from the screen, or flies buzzing around in my face but that I really felt like I was in the same room as where the action was taking place. At the beginning of the film, I almost felt embarrassed, like I was prying on these people's lives and at any moment any of them could turn round to me and say ask me what I was doing there! The only way I can describe it is as being like a looking into a mirror - where you know you are looking at a two-dimensional surface, but you also know that what you are looking at is not a picture, but real and all around you, and you see yourself as part of it.
The creatures in this film are stunning, and the landscape that they inhibit all make for a film where you actually feel like you have visited a whole new world.
OK - you can question the storyline and the depth of the characters, and whether the film has anything meaningful to say. But for me, the magical world the film creates and the fact that the nature in it is so overwhelmingly confusing and wildly hostile makes for a significant message in itself.
