untitled
APOCALYPTO
Directed by: Mel Gibson
Written by: Mel Gibson & Farhad Safinia
Internet
Movie
Database Entry for full details
GRADE: B+
2006.
Apocalypto's
at its best when it shuts up and runs. Or fights. And, surprisingly for
a mainstream American movie, its last hour or more is largely
dialogue-free. That's a testament to Mel Gibson's formalistic
fortitude, which is best on display during some truly impressive
set-pieces; he only falters in some early scenes, which are guilty of
an oversimplification of good and evil (see if you can figure out which
ones are the bad guys), common to religious types like Gibson or
Guillermo de Toro, and petty anachronism (Mayans had shrewy
mother-in-laws, too? Some things never change, yuk yuk!). "A great
civilization is not conquered from without," Gibson tells us in the
film's first moments, flashing a quote from historian Will Durant,
"until it has destroyed itself from within." That line was penned in
reference to, what else, Ancient Rome, but Gibson has claimed Apocalypto
is meant as an allegorical critique on contemporary America, though it
feels like a more literal attack on post-classical Mayans, or at least
on the generally uncivilized (of which I suppose then that America, to
Gibson, is a part.)
The film's first moments feature a slow zoom into the depths of the
jungle undergrowth; kept in suspense about what we hope to find at the
"heart" of this forest, it is ultimately revealed to be a feral boar,
less than a flattering comment—you're swine!—to whomever it
may be aimed at. A hunt of said boar follows, drenched in
foreshadowing, and concludes in a brutal slaying, an explicit organ
harvest, and a graphic feasting on testicles. Apocalypto is
only a hair away from torture porn; later, to pick just one small and
noisome example of many, an arrow goes through the back of someone's
head and comes out the mouth. That testicle bit, though, is a practical
joke; the small tribe of Mayans who function as the main characters, as
in the ones we are forced to sympathize with, are portrayed as a
quasi-naked gang of pranksters and knee-slapping good old boys. Soon
though, in a slyly implicit critique of the indefensible Iraq War,
which Gibson is on the record as being against, a different tribe, this
one far less good-natured, invades the home of our heroes; they're led
by a warrior, a butcher by the name of Zero Wolf (Raoul
Trujillo)—perhaps a loose and subtle, anti-semitic reference to Fiddler on the Roof—with
a string of human jawbones where sleeves ought to be, and an intense
scene of rapacious pillaging ensues, in which our protagonist, Jaguar
Paw (Rudy Youngblood, an appropriate name for the novice actor) hides
his enceinte wife and young child in a small cave that resembles a
well. He, though, is captured and, with the other prisoners of war,
forced to march, with the ultimate intention of being sold for
sacrifice.
The battle scene is an accomplishment for Gibson; among the tacky
violence and horseplay, rousing and tense as it is at times, he finds
some silent moments of genuine pathos, as the villagers watch their
neighbors and families slaughtered while they remain impotent, tied-up
prisoners. However, he lays the manipulativeness on a bit thick, most
of all with a long line of dew-eyed children following the slave
procession crying out for their mommies. In its first hour Apocalypto
can be a bit knuckleheaded, but visually it's astounding, most of all
in the subsequent set-piece, a twenty minute spectacle in the form of a
human sacrifice ceremony. The ritualized violence is for religious
purposes, of course, an offering to their Sun-God in imploration for an
end to the epidemics of famine and disease, and it involves the
captives' hearts being cut out, their heads cut off and thrown down the
temple stairs, followed by their necktop corpses. (Hey, remember that
pig hunting scene?) The sequence is awash in details that Gibson draws
little attention to, such as a porcine child prince relaxing in the
rearground. The scenes flares as tribal drum music blares, citizens
dance and rejoice, but the technique used to capture it is, overall,
level-headed and patient, and the scene a modern masterpiece for which
the film should be seen alone.
As it comes Jaguar Paw's turn to die, his friend wishes him luck.
"Journey well," he recommends, but Jaguar Paw, sending his love down
the well to his cached family, refuses. "I can't go. Not now." By
nothing short of a miracle—or a serendipitous coincidence
involving a simple natural phenomenon—the slaves not yet
slaughtered, including Jaguar Paw, are spared, and remanded to the
custody of their original captors, disappointed that they won't make
any cash off of the bloodthirsty fanatics. So instead they use them for
sadistic sport, hunting them with spears and arrows while they run, in
teams of two, for their freedom down a narrow field. It recalls a
similar scene with prisoners in Melville's Army of Shadows (there's a lot of movie references in the film, from a Fugitive-esque
waterfall leap to a hilarious moment in which a tree falls in the path
of the traveling procession of conquerors and slaves, and Zero Wolf
declares, "I am walking here!"), but moreso it recalls Ambrose Bierce's
story, and the popular French short film/Twilight Zone episode An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Apocalypto's overall structure, in fact, is very reminiscent of Occurrence...,
and I was ambivalently anticipating the same twist; thankfully, it
doesn't arrive, though that at once feels like a smart move and a
cop-out. (Yo, dat kudda bin awssum!) Jaguar Paw kills Zero Wolf's son,
during another miraculous escape, and now the hunt is on, which takes
up the second half of the film (hey, remember that pig hunting scene?);
J.P., wounded, is tracked through the jungle in a thrilling chase
sequence that seems to never end, as his pursuers are done in, one by
one, by the jungle (jaguars, snakes) and J.P.'s use of the jungle as
his weapon (beehive bombs, toad-poison-laced thorn-darts blown out of a
rolled up leaf).
It's in these sorts of large-scale moments that Apocalypto
really shines, while the small moments, few in number as the film goes
on, are irritating if not worthless. At bottom, there can be no denying
that Apocalypto looks beautiful, from the gorgeous jungle
cinematography, the vivid sets and the meticulous costuming; in fact,
it sports some of the most impressive make-up and set- and
costume-design I've ever seen, thanks in no small part to production
designer Tom Sanders, and a crew too large to identify each by name,
who create a tactile universe that, along with the dialogue being
spoken in authentic Yucatec, give the film a convincing aural and
visual verisimilitude that only adds to the urgency of its execution.
With hundreds of extras and baroque sets, it looks, deliciously, like
it cost a lot of money—and not just, like most modern movies, for
CGI effects, of which there are thankfully few.
After a shaky start, awash in "telling", Gibson firmly plants his feet
in "showing" and lets pure, riveting action do the job of the cheap
character development he engaged in earlier. The film ends with J.P.
taking his family into the woods and speaking of finding their new
beginning; he seems like an American surrogate, who needs to not only
shed his fellow tribesmen but to kill off the posse of cohabiting
autochthones before he can establish a new life for himself, just as we
couldn't have a United States before getting out of Europe and getting
dem injuns out of the way. But though J.P.'s survival is the result of
another apparent miracle—the appearance of strange, floating men
bearing large wooden crosses—a small knowledge of history tells
you his future isn't very bright, and his children won't be hunting the
same forests his ancestors have always hunted. Is Apocalypto
meant as a parable for what happens to the unChristianized savage, and
is it supposed to serve as a warning for secular humanists with their
rampant abortions and callous stem cell research? Well, it's a Mel
Gibson movie, so of course it's going to be politically problematic,
even annoying, but it's a whole lot easier to get past here than it was
in his previous movie, the irredeemable Passion of the Christ, a viscerally and theologically disgusting film.
--
Henry Stewart
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Apocalypto's
at its best when it shuts up and runs. Or fights. And, surprisingly for
a mainstream American movie, its last hour or more is largely
dialogue-free. That's a testament to Mel Gibson's formalistic
fortitude, which is best on display during some truly impressive
set-pieces; he only falters in some early scenes, which are guilty of
an oversimplification of good and evil (see if you can figure out which
ones are the bad guys), common to religious types like Gibson or
Guillermo de Toro, and petty anachronism (Mayans had shrewy
mother-in-laws, too? Some things never change, yuk yuk!). "A great
civilization is not conquered from without," Gibson tells us in the
film's first moments, flashing a quote from historian Will Durant,
"until it has destroyed itself from within." That line was penned in
reference to, what else, Ancient Rome, but Gibson has claimed Apocalypto
is meant as an allegorical critique on contemporary America, though it
feels like a more literal attack on post-classical Mayans, or at least
on the generally uncivilized (of which I suppose then that America, to
Gibson, is a part.) 
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