‘Avatar’ is No. 1 movie of all time, Hurt Locker competes for Oscar

It was only a matter of time – 47 days, to be precise.

According to the box office tally site Boxofficemojo.com, “Avatar” is now the highest-grossing movie of all time domestically. The James Cameron film’s business now stands at $601.1 million, ahead of the $600.8 million Cameron’s “Titanic” did back in 1997-98.

Moreover, “Titanic” took 252 days to top out; “Avatar,” which has been the biggest movie in the country since its mid-December release, is still No. 1 and shows little sign of flagging (and those nine Oscar nominations won’t hurt).

The film is already the global box office leader, having topped “Titanic’s” $1.8 billion-plus last week.

Yes, there’s been a lot of teeth-grinding over what this means. Yes, tickets for “Avatar” cost more than “Titanic,” or “Star Wars,” or “Gone With the Wind.” Yes, the film is still down the list if you adjust for inflation. But credit where credit is due: “Avatar” was a monumental gamble – its budget is the kind of thing that can cripple studios – and it’s paid off, both critically and commercially. James Cameron has got the golden touch.

Set in future on an alien moon called Pandora, Avatar movie tells the timeless story of greed, immaturity and the violence that arises out of ignorance. Here I refer to the fundamental ignorance: the ignorance of not knowing one’s place in the scheme of things. Would we as a species find a way to survive our inner demons or would our demons consume us?

The story revolves around a soldier who goes to Pandora to help The Corporation that wants to mine and export oil (ok, it’s called unobtainium). The Na’vi are the alien arboreal humonoid civilization that thrives on the planet. They are part of a vast symbiotic living system that includes plants and animals which are all connected by an intricate biological communication network. The Corporation wants to mine the moon and the Na’vi fight for their homeland. A paraplegic soldier sent to participate in a scientific experiment + diplomacy mission falls in love with a Na’vi woman and the rest is predictable. Along the way, we are introduced to Avatars. Avatars are biological creations made from human and alien DNA. They are not self-aware and are controlled by a human (from whose DNA it was made). The soldier controls an avatar that is made from his DNA (his brother’s actually).

Cameron a skillful film-maker. Avatar breaks new ground. The alien world Cameron and his team present us is one of the most thought-out and consistent I have seen in movies. The movie succeeds in air-dropping us into Pandora and making us identify with the Na’vi exceedingly well. As audience, we seamlessly cross the species boundary and root for the aliens to succeed against the childish arrogant pricks called humans.

The science behind the movie has it’s pitfalls–for instance, how does the communication with the Avatar work while all other comm equipment fail in the vortex–, however, much of the alien world is credible and beautifully rendered in glorious 3D. It’s is also refreshing to see the 3D presented in an understated manner instead of in-your-face manner.

Art that is painted on a big canvass has its perils, especially for the artist. A movie like Avatar is a comprehensive expression of the director’s mind. It highlights both the refinement and the rough edges of the artist’s vision. This is true of Avatar. Avatar is a idealistic movie (some may say, children’s movie and there is truth in it) that aspires for an ideal world where there is no exploitation and humans are an enlightened bunch. Fortunately, the movie’s moral premise plays second fiddle to the technical feats.

I enjoyed the movie. The ending is especially poignant. The visual effects are spectacular and a lot of the production techniques are a first in the craft of movie making. For that alone, the movie is a must see and deserves to be considered as the number 1 movie of all time.

“The Hurt Locker”, on the other hand, directed by Kathryn Bigelow from a script by Mark Boal, is the best non-documentary American feature made yet about the war in Iraq. This may sound like faint praise and also like a commercial death sentence, since movies about that war have not exactly galvanized audiences or risen to the level of art. The squad of well-meaning topical dramas that trudged across the screens in the fall of 2007 were at once hysterical and noncommittal, registering an anxious, high-minded ambivalence that was neither illuminating nor especially entertaining. And the public, perhaps sufficiently enervated and confused by reality, was not eager to see it recreated on screen.

The movie is a viscerally exciting, adrenaline-soaked tour de force of suspense and surprise, full of explosions and hectic scenes of combat, but it blows a hole in the condescending assumption that such effects are just empty spectacle or mindless noise. Ms. Bigelow, whose body of work (including “Point Break,” “Blue Steel,” “Strange Days” and “K-19: The Widow Maker”) has been uneven but never uninteresting, has an almost uncanny understanding of the circuitry that connects eyes, ears, nerves and brain. She is one of the few directors for whom action-movie-making and the cinema of ideas are synonymous. You may emerge from “The Hurt Locker” shaken, exhilarated and drained, but you will also be thinking.

Not necessarily about the causes and consequences of the Iraq war, mind you. The filmmakers’ insistence on zooming in on and staying close to the moment-to-moment experiences of soldiers in the field is admirable in its way but a little evasive as well. “The Hurt Locker,” which takes place in 2004 (it was filmed mostly in Jordan), depicts men who risk their lives every day on the streets of Baghdad and in the desert beyond, and who are too stressed out, too busy, too preoccupied with the details of survival to reflect on larger questions about what they are doing there.

The filmmakers, perhaps out of loyalty to their characters, are similarly reticent. But within those limits, “The Hurt Locker” is a remarkable accomplishment. Ms. Bigelow, practicing a kind of hyperbolic realism, distills the psychological essence and moral complications of modern warfare into a series of brilliant, agonizing set pieces.

Avatar and The Hurt Locker are facing off for best picture and best director in the 82nd Academy Awards.

If “Avatar” wins, it will be only the second fantasy film to win the top prize, following 2003’s “The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.”

If “Hurt Locker” wins, it will be the first Iraq War drama to win.