With
famine ravaging the land, the Mayan civilisation is on the decline.
In a last attempt to please their god this savage race invade a quiet
forest community killing many and taking several hostages. Hunter Jaguar
Pow (Rudy Youngblood) hides his pregnant wife and young son down a well
for protection promising to return for them before being caught himself.
The hostages are taken to Mayan city and offered to their god as sacrifices.
But Jaguar Pow escapes sacrifice and sets off through the jungle to
return to his family with the vicious Mayan Zero Wolf in hot pursuit.
Sadly Mel
Gibson has been getting publicity for all the wrong reasons over his
anti-semantic comments last month, but put all that aside and Apocalypto
is a triumph.
Gibson is a real story teller and he makes his films with such passion
and great commitment that it seems odd that this is only his 4th directorial
outing in 13 years.
But Apocalypto hits the ground running and doesn’t pause
for breath right from the killing of a taper in the opening scenes to
Jaguar Pow’s desperate bid to save his family two hours later.
Like Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ before
it, it’s a violent and bloody movie with the removal of hearts
and beheadings so anyone with a weak stomach should give this one a
miss. But for me in terms of violence it isn’t a patch on Passion.
In fact the violence in this picture is where I have my greatest criticism
in places Gibson tries so hard to shock or even repulse the audience
that it ends up being quite comical that you can’t help but laugh.
There are some incredible set pieces especially the pyramids in the
Mayan city which really bring this lost civilisation to life and Jaguar
Pow’s leap over a waterfall.
The race through provides the film with a fabulous back-drop to accompany
the heart of the action which is the climax of the film.
Gibson has cleverly used an unknown cast and Rudy Youngblood puts in
a great turn as Jaguar Pow as he easily slips into the Mayan language
that is spoke throughout.
Many of Hollywood’s big wigs claimed that they would not support
this film in any way after Gibson’s faux pas but I find it hard
to see how they can ignore it. Not only will it resurrect Gibson in
the eyes of the film industry and cinema go-ers but I wouldn’t
be surprised to see a couple of nominations for this film in the forthcoming
awards season.
All in all this is an exciting action adventure movie that will do nothing
but enhance Gibson’s directorial CV although it will not be for
everyone. But you can safely assume that you will see nothing else like
it in cinemas this year.
by Helen Earnshaw
Apocalypto
**
Mel
Gibson’s latest directorial effort, Apocalypto, offers
its audience the view of “a new beginning” (the literal
translation of the title and a sentiment echoed throughout the film
at various points), but what is on the surface an engaging action picture
offers little that is new or challenging in its presentation of the
ancient Mayan culture in pre-Columbian Mexico.
In some ways it is to be
commended that Gibson has not seen fit to treat the film as a showcase
for some of his more outlandish (and potentially offensive) theories,
as has been the case in the past, but he seems to have pulled in his
ideological feelers to such an extent that there is no exploration or
innovation within the chosen sphere, and has still not escaped causing
offence among the Amerindian population in his depiction of their ancestors.
The visual side of the film is indeed magnificent, barring one or two
incidences of dubious animatronix that render a somewhat muppety result;
the vision of early-modern Mexico (albeit one staged in Central America)
is resplendent with photography that carries us into that world quickly
and simultaneously evokes a sensation of vast open spaces and encroaching
danger and the paradoxical urgency and claustrophobia that accompanies
it. One particular set piece, the human sacrifice conducted by the fascistic
tribe seeking to dominate its counterparts throughout the region, is
a stunning recreation.
However, the provision of
this intriguing setting, underexplored in cinematic terms, is window
dressing to distract from the fact that Gibson is really not attempting
anything beyond the bounds of the formulaic Americanised action movie.
The interpolation of western-style humour serves the obvious purpose
of humanizing the protagonists and drawing in the audience to identify
with them, but there is a crassness here that emphasizes the fact that
Apocalypto’s attractive Latin American hide is stretched over
a creaking Hollywood framework. Similarly, the quotation at the beginning
of the film from the 18th-century American historian, Will Durant (“A
great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed
itself from within.”), offers no epiphany, but merely serves to
permit Gibson to avoid confronting any difficult issues related to the
deterioration of indigenous society in the face of oppressive colonialism,
evidence of which is limited to a melodramatic closing scene (that is
nevertheless another visually striking set piece).
The evidently futile
disappearance of the protagonist and his family into the jungle in search
of the “new beginning” is a cop-out par excellence. What
exactly is Gibson implying? Is he genuinely grasping the dark essence
of the death of one culture at the hands of another and infusing the
film with an underlying irony as the family runs towards a non-existent
future, in contrast with the wham-bam good vs. evil tumult of the majority
of its running time? Or, is he trying to dupe the audience into looking
past history to see the arrival of a deceptively noble-looking bunch
of Europeans and a parallel and independent existence for the native
peoples of Latin America that is hinted at in the film’s semi-fantastical
narrative? While superficially “rooting for” the Mayans,
apart from an implied cunning, mainly in the art of fighting, the film
gives little insight into or reflection of the great advances in science,
mathematics and philosophical thought made by that civilization, and
instead boils this down into superstition and some meaningful glances
by the elders just before they get their throats cut.
Despite all this,
the film is brisk, attention-grabbing, with its brilliant photography,
and effectively paced - there is little watch-checking. What might deprive
of it of its status as an emphatically bankable crowd-puller is Gibson’s
insistence, as in the earlier Braveheart (1995) and The
Passion of the Christ (2004), on extensive and horribly graphic
violence. There is a sense that this goes beyond a grim-faced realism
towards a kind of pornography, especially given the film’s tone
as fantasy adventure rather than historical document. Also, it is larded
with cinematic clichés and monumentally unambitious in the ideological
exploration of its theme. Its effectiveness as historical revision and
box-office winner may have been stymied by a paradoxical combination
of bloodlust and intellectual timidity.
by Tom Scruton
Mel
Gibson
Interview
