FILM REVIEW

Avatar

Written and directed by James Cameron (2009; USA; action/adventure; rated PG-13; 160 minutes; released by Twentieth Century Fox)

Before Tomorrow

Written and directed by Marie-Hélène Cousineau and Madeline Ivalu (Canada; 2008; drama; 93 minutes; subtitled; Igloolik Isuma Productions)

Review by Steven Mendel

 

I recently saw two movies that could not be more different but share a common theme. One, Avatar, is the ultimate Hollywood movie. The other, Before Tomorrow, is the epitome of the low-budget independent film. Both tell the story of the violent clash of industrialized (white) society with indigenous cultures.

Avatar, the blockbuster that has grossed just over $1.8 billion as of this writing, may be one of the most radical movies to be made in a long time. Meant to be seen in 3D (the visual effects are remarkable), the most amazing feature of the film is the retelling of the European conquest of indigenous people that unabashedly sides with the natives.

When I saw the movie the audience cheered as the blue-skinned natives were killing U.S. soldiers, and I saw this movie at the shopping mall of a working class neighborhood in an outer borough of New York City. It’s clear that the bad guys are the soldiers doing the bidding for a greedy corporation that’s forcing the native people from their ancestral land to extract a valuable mineral. The ultimate showdown pits U.S. soldiers against the natives and, to the moviegoers’ delight, the natives win.

Before Tomorrow, which follows the Inuit people of the Canadian Arctic and subarctic, is not a Hollywood movie and couldn’t be more different than Avatar. The style is documentary, the pace is slow, and the daily details of everyday Inuit life are beautifully rendered. The film is about a boy and his grandmother waiting to be picked up from a remote island where they’ve gone to dry and store the family’s catch of fish for the winter. The white people are never seen but their effects are profound and deadly. And consistent with the low-keyed realism of the film, the Inuit lose without a shot being fired or even a malevolent act on anyone’s part. In this silent clash of cultures the native people are completely wiped out in a way that goes unnoticed by the outside world. Like that, they’re gone, like they never existed.

Avatar, for all its historical revision still clings to some racial stereotypes. The leader of the natives is a spy from the invading industrialized forces who falls in love with the native princess and changes sides. The movie implies that without the leadership of the American spy who goes native, the natives would not have been able to defeat the Americans. But would the heroic American have led the native troops if he wasn’t in love with the native princess? The indigenous people portrayed as noble savages, innocent and perfect, complete the whole Eurocentric perspective of indigenous people. But even so, the overwhelming message is that corporate greed backed up by military might is wrong and deserves to be defeated. Pretty heady stuff during these times.

Taken together, these films are a potent indictment of Western colonization. Before Tomorrow depicts in heartbreaking detail the extinction of a society almost by accident while Avatar, in its own shoot-‘em-up way, depicts what might have been if the real good guys had won.

[A note about Before Tomorrow: It’s the last of the Fast Runner trilogy about the Inuit produced by an indigenous people’s film company. The three films are available for pay-what-you-can download at www.isuma.tv. Avatar is, as they say, playing at a theater near you.] 

 

Steven Mendel is a licensed psychologist in private practice in New York City. His book, Love is Not Enough: Making Your Marriage Work, was published in 2008. He has published numerous fiction and non-fiction pieces and is currently writing a novel about student radicals during the 1960s.