Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto”
July 4, 2007
The Free Articulator is in support of Creative Artists and is written and published by Creative Artists. I’m pushing to the side the arguments that Apocalypto is a poor movie because it has some ’slight cultural inaccuracies’; and getting on to reviewing a work of fiction. Mel Gibson is not a historian or an academic; he’s a storyteller and actor, directing a work of art in order to deliver a story. Some anthropologists in the middle of New York decided that Gibson had picked and chosen elements of history and culture that suited the story’s ability to build up tension and drama.
Hey, scientists - you self-proclaimed masters of the arts! - this is a work of art. It’s neither a history book nor one of your pathetically verbose and dry academic pieces. Your comments are ridiculously out of place. They don’t apply here. Artists can and will take what they want and use what they want for the sake of the storytelling. Please busy yourself by dusting off your bookshelves or go study the interactions between developing civilizations and limestone or some bullshit like that, but whatever it is, make sure it’s not getting published in a newspaper or getting in TV and proliferating an attitude already far too prevalent in our society. In case you didn’t notice, I think Lord of the Rings had some historical inaccuracies as well. Ever seen a hobbit in these parts?
Now that these incompetent attention-seekers have clicked away from this page in a huff, we can carry on discussing a movie based on its real merits and pitfalls.
My wife found the violence a little excessive and disturbing. She especially disliked the scene where a baby was flung away by an invader; but hey, it was our son’s first day at day care and anything reminding her of children was upsetting her. I personally didn’t mind all that blood n’ guts and thought it was done in such a way as to enhance the story, but if you’re not into that kind of movie, then don’t watch it. Just don’t, because most cinemas already carry the stench of strange bodily fluids and vomit is not one I want to experience any time soon.
On the other hand it might still be worth seeing, you peace-loving types; my wife also walked out of that cinema satisfied that she spent our money on the right film, and I was particularly glad I didn’t have to sit through The Queen or Marie Antoinette.
The film’s dialogue was completely in Mayan. My sister-in-law moaned. I was indifferent, because I happen to remember how to read. I’ve changed my mind; I’m happy it was in Mayan. The use of the native language was completely appropriate and in this particular film I think the use of English or anything else would have made it so much harder to achieve a suspension of disbelief. If you think that reading and watching at the same time would prevent you from getting into the film, you’re wrong. If you watched the film and found that the subtitles prevented you from immersing yourself, then you probably have no idea what the funny looking squiggles before your eyes mean. In Australia I think there is a certain maximum age after which you can’t attend primary school; if these don’t apply where you live, feel free to enrol as soon as you can.
I found the contrast between various stages of civil development interesting; it may indeed be one of these inaccuracies, but seeing the hunter-gatherer Mayans compared to the agricultural Mayans and noting the differences in culture and religion and attitudes on the whole as an affect of this was one of the entertaining experiences in watching Apocalypto.
The first half of the movie brought to mind some more political allegory. As I watched I couldn’t help but compare the story’s events to the American scourge and its invasion and devastation of countless countries throughout the world, from those on its own doorstep to civilizations further away in the Middle East and Africa. Forget the technological advancement for a moment and you have two stories of civilizations with greater manpower causing fear, desolation and destruction in smaller nations. There’s a lack of cognition and a brutality in each. As captive women were raped and abused I couldn’t help but imagine the pain that innocent mothers in Iraq must go through at the hands of American ’soldiers’.
In the last five minutes of the film, Gibson scared the crap out of me. When I saw European colonial ships on the shores of the Mayan lands, immediately zooming in on a monk standing at the front of one of those vessels, I thought that this might end as the sequel to The Passion of the Christ. Thankfully, nothing came of it, but the themes implied are among the less savoury in the film - does he really think that the Mayans were in need of cultural and religious salvation from the Europeans? Without those scenes, it would have been a much better film.
On the whole it was a passionate (no pun intended at all, Mel) and involving film that I would certainly recommend - albeit only to friends with a strong gut!
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