Barry's Blog

Even as James Cameron's science-fiction epic "Avatar" continues to dazzle audiences with its visual wizardry, studios and filmmakers are scratching their heads, wondering when, if ever, viewers can again expect another such visual feast in cinema. With its combination of immersive 3-D images and a sophisticated performance-capture technology, the movie is approaching, if it hasn't already surpassed, $1.5 billion in worldwide ticket sales, much of it from 3-D screens.

Mr. Cameron and his producing partner, Jon Landau, have spoken of possible sequels to "Avatar," but 20th Century Fox, which distributed the movie and helped underwrite production and marketing costs of about $460 million, has yet to announce plans for a successor to a film that was at least 15 years in the making. And in a research report published by Barclays Capital, Anthony J. DiClemente and George L. Hawkey called "Avatar" an "Outlier": a unique event that leaves the business environment around it largely intact.

But as CNN's Jo Piazza reported in a recent article, "Audiences Experience 'Avatar' Blues," Cameron's  immersive spectacle may have been a bit too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression, and even thoughts of suicide after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora.

To deal with such angst, website forums have cropped up aplenty. On the fan forum site "Avatar Forums," a topic thread entitled "Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible," has received more than 1,000 posts from people, attempting to help fans cope. The topic has become so popular last month forum administrator Philippe Baghdassarian created a second thread so people could continue to post their confused feelings about the movie.

"I wasn't depressed myself. In fact the movie made me happy ," Baghdassarian said. "But I can understand why it made people depressed. The movie was so beautiful and it showed something we don't have here on Earth. I think people saw we could be living in a completely different world and that caused them to be depressed."

A post by a user called Elequin expresses an almost obsessive relationship with the film: "That's all I have been doing as of late, searching the Internet for more info about 'Avatar.' I guess that helps. It's so hard I can't force myself to think that it's just a movie, and to get over it, that living like the Na'vi will never happen. I think I need a rebound movie," Elequin posted.

A user named Mike wrote on the fan Web site "Naviblue" that he contemplated suicide after seeing the movie: "Ever since I went to see 'Avatar' I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na'vi made me want to be one of them. I can't stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it," Mike posted. "I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in 'Avatar.' "

Notwithstanding the political agenda that the movie has been criticized about, as well as such bizarre comments above (can you say, get a life?), one still has to give credit to Cameron for tapping into a deeply embedded desire and wish for a better world. Fans might find actor Stephen Lang, who plays the villainous Col. Miles Quaritch in the film, an enemy of the Na'vi people and their sacred ground, an unlikely sympathizer. Yet Lang makes an insightful observation about understanding the connection people are feeling with the movie.

"Pandora is a pristine world and there is the synergy between all of the creatures of the planet and I think that strikes a deep chord within people that has a wishfulness and a wistfulness to it... James Cameron had the technical resources to go along with this incredibly fertile imagination of his and his dream is built out of the same things that other peoples' dreams are made of."

In many ways, great cinema like "Avatar" serves as a harbinger of things to come, enchanting us and pointing us toward a better world to come. I am reminded of the words of C. S. Lewis' in his poignant sermon given to students at Oxford University, titled, "The Weight of Glory, when he spoke of this this longing (he referred to it as Sehnsucht, "inconsolable longing") and desire for a better world, a better place, free of the miseries and fallenness of this present state of affairs on this blighted planet of ours:

"We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words--to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it....At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in."

Makes one yearn and long for Narnia, doesn't it?