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Now Showing

AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER

Producers: James Cameron and Jon Landau   Director: James Cameron   Screenplay: James Cameron, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Cliff Curtis, Kate Winslet, Britain Dalton, Jamie Flatters, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, Jack Champion, Bailey Bass, Edie Falco, CCH Pounder, Jemaine Clement, Brendan Cowell, Joel David Moore, Filip Geljo, Duane Evans Jr., Giovanni Ribisi, Dileep Rao, CJ Jones, Matt Gerald and Alicia Vela-Bailey    Distributor: Disney/Twentieth Century Films

Grade: C

James Cameron’s long-gestating sequel to his mammoth 2009 boxoffice smash has the same strengths and weaknesses of its predecessor.  It’s visually and technically magnificent, but woefully deficient in plot, characterization and dialogue.  That didn’t matter to the millions who shelled out billions to watch the first film, or to the majority of the critical community, and perhaps it won’t matter to them this time around either.  But it’s sad that over thirteen years Cameron seems to have given less thought to the story he would tell than the spectacular way he would tell it.

Of course the tales the director has chosen to tell over the years have always been simple, from “Piranha II” on, and this one is no exception.  The first “Avatar” was basically “Dances with Wolves,” melded with the 1964 “Outer Limits” episode “The Chameleon.” The tall, blue-skinned Na’vi replaced the Sioux (or the peace-loving aliens of “Chameleon”), and John Dunbar (or Louis Mace) morphed into Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), the warrior who went native in the form of his Na’vi avatar, turning against the malevolent earthlings attempting to conquer the moon called Pandora to mine the valuable mineral called unobtainium.  “The Way of Water,” set about a decade and a half later, is a straightforward continuation in the form of a chase in which Jake is pursued by a maniacal old foe determined to avenge his supposed betrayal of the human race.

As well as his own death, because the pursuer is none other than Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the ex-Marine security head of the Resources Development Association (RDA), the militant arm in charge of the Pandoran conquest.  He was killed at the end of “Avatar,” of course, but in typical comic-book fashion has been resuscitated in the form of a Na’vi avatar himself, thirsting for revenge against Jake; he leads a squad of similarly-altered super-soldiers.  They’re tasked by General Ardmore (Edie Falco), the head of the RDA conquest-and-colonization team, with dealing with Jake and the Na’vi by any means necessary. 

In an initial encounter the children of Jake and his Na’vi mate Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña)—sons Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), daughter Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss) and adopted teen daughter Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), as well as their jungle-boy human chum Spider (Jack Champion)—are briefly captured by Quaritch, but all escape except Spider, whom the colonel forces to join him as an unwilling scout.

What does Jake do in response?  In essence he flees, abandoning the forest tribe he’s led for years and taking his family to seek refuge with the distant sea Na’vi; for the rest of the film nothing is heard of what’s happening back in the forest.  This might seem the equivalent of John Dunbar leaving the Sioux at the approach of the cavalry to live with the Apache, but what Cameron is embracing is the old western cliché of the peace-loving man who does all he can to avoid violence until he’s compelled to use it to save his family. 

And actually this decision introduces the best section of the film, in which the Sullys find uneasy sanctuary on the island presided over by Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and his shamanistic wife Ronal (Kate Winslet).  For long stretches, however, the focus passes from the adults to the children, who learn “the way of water,” sometimes through bullying from Tonowari’s son Aonung (Filip Geljo) and his friends and sometimes through the kindly instruction of his daughter Tsireya (Bailey Bass).  Here Neteyam and Lo’ak often take center stage, the former as the youngsters’ protector and the latter as the short-tempered rebel who often earns his father’s testy remonstrance.  Lo’ak’s befriending of an outcast Pandoran whale—he actually pulls a remnant of a harpoon out of its fin, like Androcles and the lion’s paw!—becomes a major plot point in the last act.

That’s because in order to track down Sully, Quaritch has commandeered a RDA ship whose captain (Brendan Cowell) is a whale hunter. The earthlings, you see, are malevolent in a variety of ways: they not only threaten the land with their mining operations and plan to colonize the moon because their own planet is becoming uninhabitable, presumably killing off the Na’vi in the process, but they’re harvesting the whales in order to extract from their super-developed brains a liquid that can slow the human aging process.  The rest of the huge beast they simply toss aside, the way buffalo hunters disposed of the meat after taking the hides.

That sets the stage for the big final confrontation, which is indeed humongous, as well as very long and repetitive (the poor Sully girls get captured and tied up repeatedly on the whaling vessel).  One can glimpse bits of many other films—a snatch of “Free Willy” here, a conflicted father-son moment reminiscent of “The Empire Strikes Back” there, even a “Moby Dick” moment—before the battle ends as you would expect given that Cameron is preparing a couple more installments in the franchise.  But the heroes suffer losses, which bring a teary reminder of the “Circle of Life” on Pandora, where the Na’vi and their environment live in harmony and only the human interlopers threaten destruction.

It goes without saying that “The Way of Water” is a visual feast.  Cameron has advanced the motion-capture process once more, and together with visual effects supervisors Joe Letteri and Richard Baneham has fashioned figures far advanced from the dead-eyed creations remembered from pictures like “The Polar Express.”  They still don’t look “real,” though, and the performances of the actors playing them can’t be assessed in the normal fashion.  In fact, the few humans are a relief by comparison, even if their acting is not of the best (e.g., frantic Cowell and prosaic Falco); among them the best is certainly Champion, who gives Spider some authentic emotion.  But one also has to admire Weaver, who appears in a few scenes as her original, now-deceased “Avatar” character Grace, but also takes on the job of playing a fourteen-year old.  It helps none of them, though, that the dialogue throughout is so juvenile; how many times does one need to hear somebody say “Let’s do this!” or “Go, go, go!”?   

The backgrounds in which the characters are set, on the other hand, are mostly magnificent, with the underwater “locales” particularly gorgeous, the imaginatively rendered, often luminous, creatures—including that Willy-like whale—impressive indeed.  (The exception is the finale, with its setting on the whaling vessel, a thoroughly conventional construct.)  Kudos are certainly due production designers Dylan Cole and Ben Procter, costume designer Deborah L. Scott and cinematographer Russell Carpenter, even if one questions the wisdom of Cameron’s decision to shoot at 48 frames per second, which adds clarity at the expense of realism.  But though having to wear glasses is burdensome (especially if one already wears a pair), the 3D effect is striking.  The same can’t be said of Simon Franglen’s score, which is for the most part ordinary bluster.

The one technical aspect subject to serious criticism is the editing, credited to Stephen Rivkin, David Brenner and John Refoua along with Cameron.  Given the extraordinary labor that must have gone into every frame, one can understand the reluctance to lose any of them, but at well over three hours the film wears out its welcome long before the endless final credits roll; in particular the climactic battle feels padded.  We are told, over and over again (the script has a propensity to repeat what Cameron apparently considers gems of dialogue), “The Way of Water has no beginning and no end.”  We know the first half of the formulation is wrong, because we experience the Twentieth Century fanfare at the start; but there are times as you watch when you fear the second half might prove all too true.

In the end—and fortunately, there is one—it comes down to the same question that hovered over the original “Avatar.”  Is the visual spectacle enough to make up for the script’s myriad weaknesses?  One suspects that for many viewers, the answer will again be yes, though not perhaps to the same degree.  It will be difficult for even Cameron to top the highest-grossing movie of all time.                      

Now Showing

GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO

Producers: Guillermo del Toro, Lisa Henson; Gary Ungar, Alex Bulkley and Corey Campodonico   Directors: Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson   Screenplay: Guillermo del Toro and Patrick McHale   Cast: Ewan McGregor, David Bradley, Gregory Mann, Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, Ron Perlman, Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, Burn Gorman, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson   Distributor: Netflix

Grade: A-

The possessive in the title is fair warning that this new film of Carlo Collodi’s 1883 fable about the puppet that comes to life reflects the sensibility of its co-writer/co-director.  But after Robert Zemeckis’ blandly anonymous retelling of the story for Disney+ a few months ago, that’s a blessing.  While Zemeckis did little but clone the famous 1940 animated film, del Toro attempts something far more adventurous—to meld Collodi’s dark vision with his own perspectives and—shall we say it?–obsessions.  The result is a “Pinocchio” that’s a copy of nothing—neither the original nor any previous version of it—but a brilliant, highly personal reimagining of its themes.  Even the slightly unfinished feel of its gorgeous stop-motion animation adds to the unique impression it leaves.

The outline of the tale is the familiar one.  Woodcarver Geppetto (voiced by David Bradley) fashions a puppet that’s brought to life.  Pinocchio, as he’s called, goes through a series of adventures in which he learns lessons about life, death, obedience, and truth-telling.  His goal is to become a “real boy.”

No screen retelling has been been completely faithful to Collodi, and del Toro’s is no exception; in fact his alterations, omissions and additions are more pronounced than one encounters in others.  But it does reflect the original in that though the film doesn’t lack for moments of geniality, overall it’s far darker than previous takes on the tale.

That’s evident from the shifting of the narrative to the early twentieth century, and to a pervasive sense of loss.  Things begin with a sweet prologue in which Geppetto and his ten-year old son Carlo (Gregory Mann) enjoy an idyllic life together in their small village, until the boy is killed during World War I by a stray bomb, dropped from a plane on the parish church where he and his father are working on an imposing crucifix to stand behind the altar.  Heartbroken, Geppetto buries Carlo beside a perfect pinecone the boy had found, which grows into the tree beside which he sits constantly in a drunken stupor.

This is where the cricket enters the story—not Disney’s chipper Jiminy, but Sebastian J. (Ewan McGregor), a well-travelled litterateur who takes up residence in the tree to write his memoirs; he looks rather like something out of “Mimic” rather than a cartoonish figure, and gets squashed repeatedly (as he is in Collodi).  When Geppetto cuts down the tree to carve a puppet to replace Carlo, Sebastian travels with him back to his woodshop. 

But Geppetto leaves the puppet unfinished, which explains why, when Pinocchio is brought to life by the luminous Wood Sprite (Tilda Swinton), he’s a gnarly, rough-hewn, stick-like thing that terrifies the villagers when he enters their church.  (There’s a remarkable moment when Pinocchio adopts the pose of the crucified Christ, only one instance in which del Toro uses Christian religious iconography, and then asks why the congregants revere one wooden figure while hating another. Indeed, Pinocchio will himself be crucified before the film is over.)  And when his nose grows whenever he lies, Pinocchio sprouts what amounts to a branch, with leaves attached to the twigs.

By this time, Italy has turned to fascism—for modern viewers, a more accessible form of brutal administrative authoritarianism than the corrupt nineteenth-century Italian state Collodi portrayed—and the town Podestà (Ron Perlman) demands that the creature go to school and become a good servant to Mussolini.  But Pinocchio shirks study and falls in with sleazy Count Volpe (Christoph Waltz) and his monkey minion Spazzatura (Cate Blanchett), who force him into starring in their puppet act by threatening Geppetto.  When Pinocchio rebels by insulting Il Duce during a command performance, he’s shot for his trouble.

Nonetheless he is compelled to join Mussolini’s youth brigade alongside the Podestà’s son Candlewick (Finn Wolfhard).  That results from the fact that, as explained by the Wood Sprite’s sister Death (also Swinton), a sphinxlike figure in the underworld, he cannot die permanently: after each “death” he will be brought to the underworld in a casket carried by four gruff poker-playing rabbits (Tim Blake Nelson)—only to be returned to life after a brief time with her.  And in befriending the puppet against his father’s demands, Candlewick learns that sometimes disobedience can be a positive virtue, del Toro’s telling thus turning the usual message on its head.

The big finale, of course, is the episode in which Geppetto and Sebastian are trapped in a giant dogfish while searching for Pinocchio, but it takes an especially imaginative twist involving the upending of another traditional message—sometimes lying can be a good thing!—and multiple acts of self-sacrifice.  Even what it means to be a “real boy” is reconsidered here.  Rest assured that despite its darker-than-usual aspects, del Toro’s Pinocchio ends in sentiment with an injunction to be oneself.

The film has been lovingly made, and in technical terms it’s outstanding—besides the superior animation supervised by Brian Leif Hansen and visual effects by Jeffrey Schaper and Aaron Weintraub, its visuals boast exceptional work from production designers Guy Davis and Curt Enderle, art director Robert DeSue, and cinematographer Frank Passingham, all seamlessly edited together by Ken Schretzmann and Holly Klein.  In addition there’s a typically engaging underscore by the always inventive Alexandre Desplat, who also supplies the melodies for a series of songs with lyrics by del Toro, Roeben Katz and Patrick Hale. These aren’t numbers of the big, splashy, repetitive sort that afflict most musicals on stage and screen nowadays, but simple tunes of the kind that Broadway composers used to turn out—charming rather than bombastic.

They’re one more element in a version of “Pinocchio” that’s very different from Collodi’s—and Disney’s, and everyone else’s—and reflecting the personality and creative energy of an idiosyncratic filmmaker at the height of his powers (and, happily, able to attract financing for his projects).  Parents may have to explain some of its plot points to their children (who, after all, might not know who Il Duce was), and may in fact enjoy it more than their offspring do; but it’s an enchanting feast for all.