Love Life, and Live Life Closer to Nature

Quote: “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake” Bernard Shaw

Topic: Love life, and live life closer to nature

Inge (Chair): A reluctant hero

Liezl: An epic journey

Danielle: A choice between the life he left behind

Elmiri: and the incredible new world he’s learned to call home.

Inge: Ladies and gentleman welcome to

Together: AVATAR

Chair:
This 2010 blockbuster by James Cameron has made a big impression on the four of us, and, may I assume, on all of you who have watched this 2 hour and 46 minute masterpiece. Several decades in the dreaming and more than four years in the actual making, the movie is a song to the natural world. In the article “A new Eden, both cosmic and cinematic’, journalist Manohla Dargis reviewed this movie in the New York Times of 18 December 2009. She writes that Avatar was created to conquer hearts, minds, history books and box-office records.   This proved correct as the movie earned $2.012 billion US dollars around the world according to the website www.the-numbers.com.
In short, the movie is set on a distant planet Pandora, home to the native Na’vi tribe. The main character, Jake Sully,   controls his Na’vi body and becomes a part, and towards the end, the leader of the tribe. They fight against a greedy corporation who wants to mine every scrap of the precious metal, unobtanium, from the planet, destroying everything that stands in its path. What captured our imagination in this movie, is how closely the Na’vi tribe is connected to nature, and how happy and healthy they are because of it. They even have something that looks like fiber optic cables in their plaits that they plug into plants and animals. Now, dear audience, we realise that this is not entirely possible for us here on earth, but the idea of connecting with nature definitely has merit. Avatar is a celebration of life, and made us think of the following Bernard Shaw quote: “I... [continues]

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