Jamesaavatara!

2 months pre-release and a month after its release, was the amount of time I was longing to watch, arguably the most anticipated movie of recent times. Getting tickets for Avatar in Bangalore was like mission impossible-5! Rave reviews and opinions from friends and some of the film critics alike, had increased my expectations 2 fold. And the fact that the movie had grossed around 5000 Crore worldwide in its first month only added to my soaring curiosity. I finally managed to get tickets after a month (Courtesy Solar Eclipse! - relatively lesser number of people come out that day). I was all pumped up with anticipation and the 3D glasses had almost turned me into a kid. I was exchanging my pair with my mom’s. I mean, come on! You wouldn’t want to watch a 3D movie for the first time in your life with a distorted pair of glasses, would you?
The genius of James Cameroon was well established after his last movie, the cult “Titanic”. So, I didn’t expect anything less than spectacular from his latest offering. But , did the movie stand up to my expectations? Yes and No! Let me make a disclaimer, at the outset. Each of us are entitled to our opinion and this is my individual opinion and I could be completely wrong! Avatar is an alien story. But, for once aliens here are not large headed or multi-colored or contorted-faced creatures but we, the humans! Earthlings have invaded a moon of the planet Polyphemus, called Pandora which has its own native species called the Na’vi. The reason for this invasion is a precious mineral called Unobtanium. What stands between the humans and the Unobtanium now is the indigenous Na’vi population who dwell on a huge hometree that is on the largest Unobtanium reserve in the planet. The task at hand is to drive the Na’vis away from their place and two teams are at work for this endeavor. One, a military force whose major believes in “Shock and Awe” theory to exterminate the natives out, and the other, a team of scientists working on an “Avatar” program. Here Navi look-alikes are cloned and controlled by humans. This team believes in negotiating and convincing Na’vis to relocate their place, by being one of them. The protagonist of the story Jake is an ex-marine who has lost his limbs. Jake’s Avatar lands up inside the Na’vi land and becomes a part of them by learning and understanding their way of life with the help of a young Na’vi female Neytiri. Soon he realizes the deep connection they have with their forest and the divine relationship they share with the nature. Finally Jake reveals that his real purpose of entering their land and lives was to make them understand that they are not safe in this place and to convince them to move away from the forest. Humans, people from the skies as they are called, launch an attack on the Na’vis. And predictably, Na’vis come together from all over Pandora and decide to fight back, under the leadership of “now enlightened” Jake. And more predictably they succeed.
Now, coming back to the question of whether the movie stood up to my expectations and my answer to that. Yes, because Avatar, technically was everything that I had imagined it to be and more. it’s a visual experience like no other! The meticulous attention paid to detailing is mind boggling. The illuminated ponds, the tree of souls and almost everything you see in Pandora is a visual spectacle. Hats off to the imagination of its creators. The amount of effort and painstaking time gone into creating every single creature in Pandora, right from a small insect to seeds of Eywa to every single shrub to the legendary floating mountains, is evident in every frame. It seems as though days or even months were spent in conceiving, creating and bringing each being to life on screen. How I wish, a quarter of that time was spent on making the storyline stronger and the screenplay more convincing! Usually science fiction movies or technically savvy movies fall pray to the stereotype of being just that- ”technically savvy but intellectually numb!” But I expected James Cameroon to break that jinx and come out with a movie which is not only brilliant technically but also has a backing of a powerful script. Sadly though, Avatar did not stand up to my expectation in this department. By no means can Avatar be called intellectually numb, but an over-simplified film. Avatar is a fairy tale at the end of the day, where an underdog takes on the mighty and wins eventually. The thing with any fairy tale is that everyone knows the ending. So, how will you make such a predictable outcome interesting and how will you make the story work? By making it as believable as possible I suppose. When we see Lagaan, we can believe that a group of farmers took on an English cricket team and humbled them in their own game. An Apocalypto works for the same reason. When it comes to Avatar, it is hard to digest the predictable climax where a bunch of Na’vis defeat a lethal and sophisticated army with bows and arrows. Flying dragons pulling people out of the helicopters was almost cartoon movie style! It is this simplification of climax that was a lump that was too big to swallow. Not just the climax, scene where the Na’vi king easily accepts Jake’s plea to learn their culture and inducts him into their society, or the scene where army major decides to bring down the hometree based on just a video log from a sleepy Jake, is far fetched and hard to believe. If the makers had given more thought and come up with more solid sequences than these simplistic escape routes, Avatar would have been much more than a visual wonder. Also, some of the messages that Cameroon has tried to send out are too much on the face rather than subtle. Can you believe, in one of the dialogue, the army major actually says “We will fight terror with terror”.
All said and done Avatar is still recommended as must watch despite its shortcomings for the sheer vision and imagination of one man, James Cameroon. Just that, it could have been much more than what it is, had he given more importance to the basic element of story telling, a strong script. I walked out of the theatre into the chilly atmosphere of Bangalore with a mixed feeling of satisfaction and disappointment in my heart.

Journey to BEML nagar

Around 16:00 hrs
India needs just 4 runs to complete a historic win and Sachin is on 99 and on strike! Me and my sister are watching the match with bated breath and mom shouts, “we are getting late for the train, get up and get going”. Now my sister’s turn to shout “ya ya right after the match, it’s almost over”. And finally that moment, a little paddle sweep by the little master and the ball races past the fine leg for a boundary. What a moment! What a victory! All the more sweet cos sachin was there till the end to see us through. Sachin raises his bat with elation and yuvi lifts him. Me and my sister religiously get up and give a standing ovation (a ritual in our house after a sachin’s ton!). Mom repeats, now with a slightly retired tone “We will miss the train! It will depart at 6!” Now I go, “ya we will leave, let the interview of sachin get over”. Mom drops her bag with a ‘totally given up’ look. Finally we leave for the railway station at around 16:20 hrs. We were leaving to BEML Nagar near KGF, the place where my uncle stayed with his family.

17:30 hrs
We reach Majestic bus stand and although the Bangalore city railway station is right across the road, it’s a good 10 minutes walk. Getting onto the over bridge and reaching the underpass to cross the road. We scampered through to the ticket counters to find serpentine queues in front of all the counters. The clock is ticking, its 17:45 hrs! Three of us stand in three different queues with a purpose of giving ourselves the best chance to get to a counter as early as possible. I reach the counter first and ask for 3 tickets to BEML Nagar, the cashier at the counter insists for exact change, Rs 42. I try to fish for a 2 rupee coin in my wallet and luckily find one. I collect the ticket and get my mom and sister out of their queues respectively.

17:55 hrs
I run to the enquiry counter to find the platform number of our train, but only find another long queue in front. With just 5 minutes left for departure, I couldn’t afford to stand in the queue for enquiry. I run to a sweeper and ask him “In which platform does the train to BEML Nagar stand?” He replied “BEML Nagar?” Luckily I remembered another major station on the way that my uncle had mentioned, so I asked “Train to Bangarpet?” To which I got my required answer, Platform number 5.
We got onto the train at 17:56 hrs, 4 mins before departure. Phew, what a relief! Found time to get my mom a cup of coffee too, from the platform vending machine.

18:00 hrs
Train started from the station exactly at the slated time, a rather surprising feat for Indian Railways! A middle aged couple sitting in the opposite berth and an old man, who for some reason never wanted to open the window shutter, were the fellow travelers in our compartment initially. So it was three of us and an old man in our berth and the couple in the opposite berth that filled our compartment, other than the stinking smell of the toilets of course! We were cursing the old man for not opening those damn windows! Come next station, and two oversized gentleman seated themselves in the opposite berth. The lady there was in no mood to take her luggage bag off the seat, so it was 4 fully grown adults and a big luggage bag that accommodated our opposite berth. I was under the impression that no one else would enter our compartment as it was filled with the maximum allotted eight people. Little did I know then, the unwritten rules of general compartment of an Indian Train. People kept on flocking our compartment and by the time the train left KR puram, there were 5 people in each of the berth of our compartment. Hold on, doesn’t end there, 5 more people on either sides, on the upper luggage berths on top of us. That’s when I noticed something displayed on the luggage berths, “Please do not keep heavy luggage!” Two things still never changed though, in our compartment. Old man, still didn’t open the window shutter, and the lady still did not take her luggage bag off the seat!
People sitting on the luggage berths, stretched their legs to opposite luggage berths forming a canopy of sorts over us. So, here I was, having taken a novel borrowed from my friend to read during the journey, now sitting in the dark canopy of human legs! As our journey progressed, one more thing started to become apparent. Almost the entire bogie or possibly the entire train was filled with Tamil speaking people. We three were probably the only Kannada ‘aliens’ in the whole bogie. All that we could see was people reading Tamil news papers or listening to Tamil songs in their mobile phones or fighting over the card game, in Tamil.
Our noses had probably got used to, and the brain had turned numb to the stench of toilet by then, but a new ‘fragrance’ started to linger. Someone sitting over us on the luggage berth had started to fart! The stench was becoming unbearable and the relentless old bugger next to the windows showed no signs of letting up. The only thing that kept me going and occupied in the whole journey was the sms conversation I was having with a friend.

20:30 hrs
The eternal journey finally came to an end when the train screeched to halt in BEML nagar. The Indian railways repeated the feat by reaching the destination on the dot! I reflected on a thought as I was descending the train. No way was I going back to Bangalore by train, which was our plan earlier!!