Ever since I saw Avatar: The Way of Water, I’ve been thinking about Looney Tunes creator Chuck Jones’ 1966 Oscar-winning short The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics. I’ve been trying to figure out why.
Maybe it’s a kind of reactionary response to the maximalism of the new Avatar movie. I’ve never seen a feature-length film as packed down, shaken together, and overflowing with animated wonders as James Cameron’s film. There is always so much you want to look at on the screen no matter what is happening in the story, and even though the film has more patience to stay on its images than most films made these days, it still never lingers among its wonders long enough. As you’d expect, Avatar: The Way of Water is an astounding visual experience.
Chuck Jones’ The Dot and the Line is at the other extreme. It is the story about the two simplest forms, and while the animation of them is terrifically clever, the images are about as simple as can be. Maybe thinking about The Dot and the Line has been a way for my brain to relax post-Avatar.
The Dot and the Line tells an incredibly simple story: a line is in love with a dot, and he learns to bend his straight and narrow ways in order to be a better partner for her. It’s the rom-com in its most essential form.
The Way of Water tells a very simple story too. It’s about a family trying to survive while a mad man hunts them. The first Avatar movie told one of those foundational stories too. It was a Rebirth narrative Oreo-cookied inside a Voyage and Return tale. Now Overcoming the Monster is the cream between the Voyage and Return wafers.
I balk a bit at the simplicity of Avatar’s story contrasted with the complexity of its world. I wonder if such incredible animation ought to be used to tell a more interesting story. But maybe we need the plot to be simple because the setting is so alien? But setting is story too. Is there a disconnect between the story my eyes think they are seeing and the story my ears are hearing? Watching Avatar: The Way of Water is like listening to an orchestra play “Chopsticks.” With The Dot and the Line, those two things—the story and the way it is being told—are in harmony.
And why do I have an easier time empathizing with the dot and the line than I do with Avatar’s Na’vi? I think it’s because the dot and the line are purely nonrepresentational, so my mind is able to make the mental leap over their otherness to see them as symbol. Avatar’s visual effects try to trick me into thinking that what I am seeing is real. Again, the animation is so mind-blowing, the world of Avatar might as well be real, but I always know it’s not. And the forms are not symbolic either. The Na’vi and the world they inhabit are slightly abstracted from the real world, and they are straining toward representational. My mind rejects them even as it marvels at them.
(Elijah, are you as bothered by the CGI characters in the superhero movies? you may be asking. I am not. The animation and visual effects aren’t as good in those films as they are in Avatar. I don’t really care about those other CGI characters. I don’t feel sympathetic pain when they appear to feel pain, because I never think they are real, but I don’t inherently reject them either. They are like physical obstacles, disposable NPCs. Importantly, they are unreal enough to not niggle my anterior prefrontal cortex.)
So, I face a conundrum – I want Avatar: The Way of Water’s story to be richer and to prompt me to feel more complex emotions, but, given the perceptual hurdle I must conquer to connect emotionally with the characters, I question whether I am capable of being moved deeply by what I am perceiving on screen. It’s not that Avatar is bad. It’s too good at the things it is good at.
It’s so good at those things that I’ve used this entire review to wrestle with them, and I haven’t even touched on the things the movie is about. Avatar: The Way of Water insists that deep, emotional connection between things with breath and blood in them is more powerful and important than any technological ambition or achievement. That’s an admirable message. But this message is delivered by a movie marked by bewildering technological ambition and achievement with almost no discernible breath or blood in it. Maybe Avatar wants audiences to reject it. Maybe it offering us the potential to obtain our wildest dreams so that we have the opportunity to turn them down in favor of the trees in our forests, the fish in our seas, and the warmth of our loved ones next to us.
Then again, in the midst of working on this review, I heard James Cameron on the radio yesterday say that if he could, he would build a Matrix-like construct so that he could flood audience’s senses with the world of Avatar more completely. He’d turn us into actual avatars. No, thank you. If they were real, I think the Na’vi, at least, would respect my choice.
Ever since I saw Avatar: The Way of Water, I’ve been thinking about Looney Tunes creator Chuck Jones’ 1966 Oscar-winning short The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics. I’ve been trying to figure out why.
Maybe it’s a kind of reactionary response to the maximalism of the new Avatar movie. I’ve never seen a feature-length film as packed down, shaken together, and overflowing with animated wonders as James Cameron’s film. There is always so much you want to look at on the screen no matter what is happening in the story, and even though the film has more patience to stay on its images than most films made these days, it still never lingers among its wonders long enough. As you’d expect, Avatar: The Way of Water is an astounding visual experience.
Chuck Jones’ The Dot and the Line is at the other extreme. It is the story about the two simplest forms, and while the animation of them is terrifically clever, the images are about as simple as can be. Maybe thinking about The Dot and the Line has been a way for my brain to relax post-Avatar.
The Dot and the Line tells an incredibly simple story: a line is in love with a dot, and he learns to bend his straight and narrow ways in order to be a better partner for her. It’s the rom-com in its most essential form.
The Way of Water tells a very simple story too. It’s about a family trying to survive while a mad man hunts them. The first Avatar movie told one of those foundational stories too. It was a Rebirth narrative Oreo-cookied inside a Voyage and Return tale. Now Overcoming the Monster is the cream between the Voyage and Return wafers.
I balk a bit at the simplicity of Avatar’s story contrasted with the complexity of its world. I wonder if such incredible animation ought to be used to tell a more interesting story. But maybe we need the plot to be simple because the setting is so alien? But setting is story too. Is there a disconnect between the story my eyes think they are seeing and the story my ears are hearing? Watching Avatar: The Way of Water is like listening to an orchestra play “Chopsticks.” With The Dot and the Line, those two things—the story and the way it is being told—are in harmony.
And why do I have an easier time empathizing with the dot and the line than I do with Avatar’s Na’vi? I think it’s because the dot and the line are purely nonrepresentational, so my mind is able to make the mental leap over their otherness to see them as symbol. Avatar’s visual effects try to trick me into thinking that what I am seeing is real. Again, the animation is so mind-blowing, the world of Avatar might as well be real, but I always know it’s not. And the forms are not symbolic either. The Na’vi and the world they inhabit are slightly abstracted from the real world, and they are straining toward representational. My mind rejects them even as it marvels at them.
(Elijah, are you as bothered by the CGI characters in the superhero movies? you may be asking. I am not. The animation and visual effects aren’t as good in those films as they are in Avatar. I don’t really care about those other CGI characters. I don’t feel sympathetic pain when they appear to feel pain, because I never think they are real, but I don’t inherently reject them either. They are like physical obstacles, disposable NPCs. Importantly, they are unreal enough to not niggle my anterior prefrontal cortex.)
So, I face a conundrum – I want Avatar: The Way of Water’s story to be richer and to prompt me to feel more complex emotions, but, given the perceptual hurdle I must conquer to connect emotionally with the characters, I question whether I am capable of being moved deeply by what I am perceiving on screen. It’s not that Avatar is bad. It’s too good at the things it is good at.
It’s so good at those things that I’ve used this entire review to wrestle with them, and I haven’t even touched on the things the movie is about. Avatar: The Way of Water insists that deep, emotional connection between things with breath and blood in them is more powerful and important than any technological ambition or achievement. That’s an admirable message. But this message is delivered by a movie marked by bewildering technological ambition and achievement with almost no discernible breath or blood in it. Maybe Avatar wants audiences to reject it. Maybe it offering us the potential to obtain our wildest dreams so that we have the opportunity to turn them down in favor of the trees in our forests, the fish in our seas, and the warmth of our loved ones next to us.
Then again, in the midst of working on this review, I heard James Cameron on the radio yesterday say that if he could, he would build a Matrix-like construct so that he could flood audience’s senses with the world of Avatar more completely. He’d turn us into actual avatars. No, thank you. If they were real, I think the Na’vi, at least, would respect my choice.
Elijah Davidson is Co-Director of Brehm Film and Senior Film Critic. Subscribe to Come & See, his weekly newsletter that guides you through the greatest films ever made, and find more of his work at elijahdavidson.com.
Watching The Fabelmans is like sitting at the feet of an accomplished raconteur. I wanted to live in this film. I never wanted it to end.
