On Water: The Misunderstood Element

(Contains spoilers)

The Avatar sequel The Way of Water released on 16 December. In many ways, I could write a ten-point list about the ways in which the original Avatar (2012) was a better movie. But let me try to belabour a different point here: James Cameron has hit upon a dominant theme in our late modern lives – the search for innocence, the search for a guiltless domain of existence, and significantly, the nearness of the apocalypse. The Avatar brand of search for greener pastures initially (predictably) started with the hunt for minerals – unobtainium. There is also the parallel scientific wonder at the communal nervous system that survives through Eywa. The sequel – The Way of Water - featured similar energies. There was a tulkun (whale-type oceanic creature) hunter who saw some value in a gland of the animal and was willing to fund a whole military operation to attain these. There were a host of Na’vi-resembling avatars – fighters from the earth – including one in whom the memory of Colonial Miles Quaritch had been inserted. And Jake Sully was now an indigenous leader going by the name Toruk Makto, with a brood of offspring with Neytiri, living the good life of the forest until these incursions begin. 

Their escape from Pandora leaving behind the rest of the Na’vi in the forest, echoes the journey of the first family, in hiding, after the birth of baby Jesus. Political threats are calculated first on the bodies of sovereigns and their offspring (future sovereigns). Their striking roots in the oceanic landscape which is the abode the Sea People, in hiding, is a response to such a threat. They learn new skills to survive in a landscape dominated by water. Of course, the military operation that is looking to sniff out Jake Sully and his family are on their heels – killing tulkun and sending a message to Sully that they would come for him and his family. Sully picks up on the clue and decides to give himself up, but Neytiri and Tonowari (the clan chief of the oceanic community) convince him to fight. 

Water is no longer an instrument or a backdrop of this bloody fight. Cameron offers an imagination for humans guilty of ruining the planet with their comfort-preferring lifestyles, to contemplate the power of an element which seems relatively benign and accepting of human-bred damage. The pristine images of the oceanic world – its various flora and fauna - are an inevitable reminder to the colossal damage to oceans and rivers (and lakes: I live in Bangalore where lakes are routinely eaten up to make up for real estate) in the most unthinking manner. So, this film is a continued reflection on human (mostly Western) guilt. It arises out of the guilt-ridden imagination that drives space scientists to look for water and comfortable temperatures on Mars and other celestial bodies. The hunt and destruction of Pandora and the ultimate defeat of humans by the ways of water is a comment on three-quarters of our planet that we don’t really interact with. Those of you who are beach-tourists or deep-sea-divers or have water-hunting skills, will find this film featuring versions of your love for water – which it does. But it does a bit more than that. Cameron captures a pristine aquatic scenario and shows the ease of destruction. This is a kind of environmental education, yes. It also provides a horizon of hope in the tapestry of water. It is in this hopeful, frightening naming of the unknown in which a common animal condition triumphs, and human hubris is defeated. The massive outcast-tulkun rises high up from the water and smashes the military warship like it was a little toy.
 

There is also a contemplation of scale in this film. I feel that the film tells us that to think at human scale is foolhardy. The vast expanse of the reef-ocean landscape lends itself to scalar thinking, as do the sheer power and force of the tulkuns. It reminds us of wildlife-tourists who go to sanctuaries to get a glimpse of a lion or tiger or elephant. It makes tourist-humans feel small, insignificant, utterly weak - even if for a moment. The feeling of fleeting weakness can be exhilarating. This film is a massive exercise in wildlife-tourism through which Cameron reminds us of our foolhardy response to threat or difficulty in our current economic and political arrangement – that we can conquer with some more gadgets and the power of human cunning. 

The film further facilitates search of animality within us. Yes, Jake Sully is an American marine who rises up the ranks of the Na’vi by his commitment to their cause and his marriage to Neytiri. A very human story of human negotiation with power. Additionally, Jake Sully’s character and the human-bred-among-the Na’vi, Spider, are testimony to the fact that humans are also animals, and have historically chosen, at crucial junctures, animality over humanity as a more ethical response to the world. Sully’s animality surfaces in his protectiveness for his offspring, and his strong survival instinct. Spider, obviously a reminder of characters like Kim and Mowgli - humans who are left in nature by circumstance - emerges as strong defender of the animal way of existence. In all of this, Cameron makes us think, with fear, about our complicity in the military-industrial complex that produces our cell-phones, automobiles, planes and warships. He doesn’t hint at an alternative source of clean energy; he evades the popular notion that if we watch our carbon footprint and separate our garbage, we should be okay.

So, go watch Avatar: The Way of Water and contemplate not the war between humans and the Na’vi but the sheer power of the water-ecosystem. Enjoy the ecotourism of the reefs and the tulkun, but wonder whether the apocalypse will be initiated not by aliens but by water.