|
APOCALYPTO - Cinema Views by Kevin J. Walker, FIlm Critic
By: Mr Kevin J Walker
December 12, 2006
|
| |
 No Forum
|
|
History can be hip and fun, and who better to know how to make an interesting Action Adventure movie with history than "Mad Max" and "Lethal Weapon" action star Mel Gibson? His "Apocalypto" is presented entirely in the Mayan language, following his "Passion of the Christ" which was Aramaic and Latin, but the story is nevertheless involving...
Cinema Views of the Word NetPaper
With Film Critic Kevin J. Walker
Mel Gibson's Apocalypto Offers Thrilling History Lesson And Adventure Tale Mining history much as he did in "Braveheart" and "The Passion of the Christ" Gibson once again shuts his critics up in the thrilling tale of a pre-Columbian Mayan society on the brink, and its entirely in an ancient Yucatan Mayan language...
Send Emails to:
thewordnetpaper@excite dot com
Milwaukee,Wis USA
Mel Gibson's towering "Apocalypto" is a gripping adventure story in the tradition of "Predator" and "Rambo: First Blood Part II" with plenty of chase scenes and hand to hand combat, with the last days of the mighty Mayan empire as a backdrop. It doesn't matter that it is presented entirely in the Yucatan Mayan dialect  I knew we were in for something different when the movie opens with a quote from historian Will Durant: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has fallen from within." Gibson's Eurocentric and pro Christian bias is very apparent here after awhile. This is not particularly a problem as creators are supposed to have a point of view, and the stronger the better for their works. The people depicted are Pagans and Heathens, considered by many to be outside of Christianity and Grace. This attitude lurks beneath the surface of "Apocalypto" and is to be considered while watching the fast moving film, because Gibson who directed and co-wrote the film has an agenda that is every bit as central as his brutal depiction of the trials of Yeshua in "The Passion of the Christ." Indeed, this film also shows Gibson's fondness for showing torture and pain from the inhumanity of others, as in "Payback" and "Braveheart" when he himself was shown in his own versions of being crucified. He even had a bit part in "Passion" – that is Gibson's right hand nailing James Cavezial ("Deja Vu") to the rough hewn cross on the Jerusalem hillside, to symbolize that we all had a hand in the Lord's demise. When people described "Apocalypto" as bloody, violent and gory this shows the pitfalls of letting effete Girly Men and Wimpettes cover films. They can't have been serious; it certainly wasn't bloodier than Stephen Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" with its realistic depictions of warfare; or "Kill Bill Part I," with people sliding around on blood smeared floors and severed heads spouting their arterial fountains on white walls. Claudia Puig, the relentlessly clueless USA Today critic who should never be allowed to review manly films, or any with action called it "…an essay in blood lust and gratuitous violence." Just below it she reviewed the Chick Flick "The Holiday," a movie she even calls sappy, but nevertheless gives it three out of four stars! It was in part because of people like Puig that I became a film critic in the first place. But I digress. A youthful oriented attitude of "Apocalypto" is established early into the film as Punking episodes are pulled upon one of the hunters, – briefly called "Ball Breath" for one of their practical jokes – who calls his manhood into question when his wife fails to conceive. He complains that it isn't his wife its her mother who rides him. Back in the village Mother In Law derides him. "Get busy!" she yells to the Punk'd hunter. "I want grandchildren. Get a move on!" as the rest of the villagers within earshot laugh. As in a small town everybody knows your history, and scenes such as this lets us know better of their placid hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Which is all about to end. "Apocalypto" is really just an adventure tale when our protagonist Jaguar Paw, played winningly by Rudy Youngblood, decides he just has to live for the sake of his family whom he has stashed away when their village was pillaged by warlike urban Mayans. We see their society and civilization, its mighty works which amaze the slave caravan as they are trotted through the streets and marketplace. These are more people in one place than they have ever seen! A fellow captive from another tribe tells Jaguar Paw "we tell stories of a place where people build with stone…" But their curiosity and amazement turns to building terror as they see the towering pyramids and the strange purplish smear on the long stone steps up to the central altar. The wall carvings ominously show a priest holding a severed head in one hand and a long knife in the other as red drips. The murmuring crowd leers at them expectantly. The men were separated out and painted bright blue; and as it is they already stand out. This is not good, and we don't need subtitles or dialog of any sort to tell us that! I was moved by the scenes of the slave auction, which hit me on an ancestral level. The merchants screaming out their bids, people plucking at their muscles, looking into their mouths as the enslaved worry about their fate. Cook? Attendant? Sex slave? Sacrifice? James Cameron, was profiled on CBS' "60 minutes" as the only known survivor of a lynching episode in Marion, Indiana. With his experiences and a visit to Israel's museum, the late curator and creator of America's Black Holocaust Museum had a genuine slave auction setup here in Milwaukee during the exhibit of the sunken slave ship the Marie Claire. Attendees were free to go up on the stand, place their hands in the crude handcuffs, and imagine the faces and shouts. I did it, and it sent chills up me to imagine the millions of times the scene was repeated over the half-millennium of the Western slave trade. This was history brought home. The slave ship exhibit is gone, but the auction setup is still there. The Mayan city scenes were amazing in their complexity and you can see where the money went. Vendors hawk their wares; children play in the streets and engage in childish mischief. Disabled are shown with ingenious contrivances to help them get along; while some scenes have no explanations. Are the standing people being punished; demonstrating some strange point; or are they religious acolytes of some sort? The captives don't know and neither do we which adds to the tension, like the bewildered Pilot in medieval Japan in TV's "Shogun." There were questions as to whether Gibson's anti-Jewish (just what is a "Semite" anyway?) ranting would hurt the film. Uh, no. This shows the East Coast and Hollywood-centric worldview, which means less than nothing to someone from the Midwest. The pundits and critics need to get out more and then they'd know more, because there's a whole world between Los Angeles, New York and Washington. DC. This is aside from the unfortunate fact that many people just aren’t upset with what he said, and there are some who inwardly say "good for you Mel, tell 'em!!" Gibson's rant is far apart from what Russell Crowe did which is to assault a hotel desk clerk with a phone. We can see ourselves behind that counter, with a wealthy powerful high-falutin' customer snidely asserting their power to the point of physical abuse, that's something we can identify with, and it hurt Crowe's "Cinderella Man." Who wants to spend their money on someone like that? What else is at the mall metroplex that we can all go and see? "Apocalypto's" subtext of is that South American civilizations such as the Mayans and further south the Aztecs like Africa destroyed themselves through their barbarism and disunity. African tribes let the palefaces take their people away in the holds of ships, and gave them safe passage across the vast interior – for awhile anyway until it was too late to see what had been done and they'd sealed their fate. Or destiny. They have been paying for it ever since, and will continue because that continent has been truly cursed by the forced removal of millions of their best fruit, and with their willingness. Like the North, Central and South Americans they should have attacked and burnt every ship that tried to land, but hindsight is always 20/20. But we can dream, and plan. In fact, I have a time travel story I'm working on based on that very premise, of technocratic and wealthy African Descended and Latin Americans trying to change the past. Gibson's interest in religious history and culture has performed a tremendous service for popular interest in history and will help preserve ancient languages, such as Aramaic, and even Latin which the Romans spoke in his Passion of the Christ. We former Latin scholars delighted in this, and uncovered our Wheelocks, the venerable text for millions. Well, hundreds of thousands. Okay, tens of thousands, maybe. This is as welcome a development as TVs adorable "Dora the Explorer" which is presented partly in Spanish. Incidentally, the Yucatan Pyramids were seen before in George Lucas' first Star Wars film "A New Hope" as the Rebel Alliance's Yavin moon retreat to shield their fleet from the Death Star above. Lucas needed something with an otherworldly look, and found them in places such as Tunisia in North Africa for Tattoine, and the gladiator-like battle in SW number two, "Attack Of The Clones." One thing they got wrong astronomically is a diddling point, but "Apocalypto" depicts a Solar Eclipse one day then that night a Full Moon. Nope, impossible! As any stargazer worth her telescope can tell you, Solar Eclipsi are only possible when the moon is in the new phase, which is the opposite of a Full Moon. Now I know Gibson wanted the artistic look of the moonlight through the leaves in the forest, but this was glaringly inaccurate. Especially if you're an amateur astronomer. Mayans knew this, as the Egyptians did with their own pyramids which made use of these things astronomical. Of all people they would know the intersecting phases, as does the sly high priest as he looks over at the elderly king after wowing the crowd below. He, knowing that in a few minutes of Totality the Moon would move on after he begs their Gods to look with favour upon his humble servants! Its important in a film like this with its subtitles to acquaint us with the various relationships, and "Apocalypto" does this. There isn't a lot of dialogue being an action film; in fact one critic observed it as "a Meso American Rambo." As Jaguar Paw – renamed "Almost" by the brutal and ambitious Hanging Moss (Gerardo Taracena) because he almost slew him – tries to get back to his family his facial expressions tell everything. Many times we don't need the subtitles which are not plentiful. Apparently the success of the film shows once again that people aren't turned off by having to read subtitles, which was demonstrated several years ago with "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Maybe now they'll release foreign versions of films instead of remaking them, as the French originals of "3 Men And A Baby," and "Le Femme Nikita." The violence and blood were appropriate for a Mayan society built upon blood sacrifice, where the still beating hearts cut out of a sacrifice were lofted high to a cheering crowd. There are little human touches: the bored Mayan queen rolls her eyes as her high priest orates about how their gods must be sated with blood, blah, blah, yada yada. As she stands for a ceremony, her bratty chubby spoiled princeling tugs at her robes. She reaches behind her and swats him away. The actors of "Apocalypto" look like regular people for a reason. Most have never been in front of a camera and had a fresh attitude and look, with the nicks and creases of a real working life lived outside of fitness gyms, high colonics, fake breasts, Botox injections and tanning salons. For the role of the High Priest Mel Gibson said on the Jay Leno's "Tonight" show the casting people kept coming back with buff locals with chiseled looks like they just came out of a Southern California Body by Jakes. "This won't do" they were told, and to keep looking. They finally came back with a dockworker, with a genuine look of a priest who'd spent his life being catered to, but with a cruelty and cunning streak in him. The camera close-ups show the emotions of the actors' faces, and draw us into their world of awe and wonder, fear, loving, community, bewilderment and growing horror. This is an adventure movie, and there is plenty of Man Stuff to be sure with warriors running with panthers (or jaguars) through the forest; and arrows whizzing past, just missing. Jaguar Paw/Almost's lovely and very pregnant wife is shown in welcome interludes as she tries to make her hidden lair safe for her and her son. Dalia Hernandez portrays her as creative and resourceful, and the humanity of their people is shown through her travails. The round faces and slanted eyes of those from the Yucatan peninsula region with their tattooed faces and hands are as genuine and refreshing as anything you'll see in film these days, and demonstrate the advantages of location shooting although it sends costs of a film way upwards. This is why if you're a producer doing a desert film, even one whose storyline is in the Middle East then Arizona or Mexico will do! Many jungle, Vietnam or Pacific theatre World War II films, or even TV shows such as "Lost" are shot in Hawaii. Milwaukee for its part has been a stand-in for baseball movies such as for the home stadium of the Cleveland Indians in "Major League" and as New Orleans for Bernie Mac's "Mr. 3000," which I was in as a Featured Extra. (Look in the background during the Milwaukee Brewer vs. Houston Astros game scenes for one of the light-skinned photographers, the one with a light hat or beret). Many films are located in Canada to get away from American labour unions and their featherbedding rules, they just have to truck in some Black and Latino people to stand around in the background scenes. Chicago is so often used because Hollywood wanted to have real people with flat accents, not the fitness and vegetarian diet, anorexia-crazed southern California actor wannabees. "Apocalypto" directed by Mel Gibson is from Touchstone Pictures, and Disney's Buena Vista film distribution arm and is rated "R" for knifings; spearings for sport; beheadings; jungle big cat face chewing; and heartbreaking depictions of rape and pillaging. –kjw Cast: Jungle Paw/Almost – Rudy Youngblood Wife of Jungle Paw – Dalia Hernendez Hanging Moss– Gerardo Taracena Also starring: Jonathan Brewer , Raoul Trujjllo, Isabel Diaz, Espiridion Acosta Cache, Carlos Emilio Baez Cinema Views of the Word NetPaper
With Film Critic Kevin J. Walker Contact:
walkernet@ gmail dot com;
walkerworld_2000@ yahoo dot com
FILM CRITIQUES
TRAVELS to Kemet, Middle East; Mediterranean: Athens, Greece; Rome
PHOTOS of Pyramids, Jerusalem, Hawai’i
WalkerWorld Science Where Did White People Come From? WalkerWorld Politics Analysis Column
Local Milwaukee Politics thewordnetpaper @excite dot com
Milwaukee,Wis USA
|
|
More MovieReview
HEADLINES
Our Partner:Kevin Walker
Mr. Walker is a print journalist who often includes Science and Travel articles among his forays on political and societal observations. A past professor of Journalism at his Alma Mater of Marquette University, Walker has written extensively for several newspapers on urban issues, and is presently compiling his essays on the phenomenon of intractable trans-generational familial poverty into the book in progress "The Culture of Poverty," based on his observations on the effects of Welfare Reform in his hometown in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He often writes from an Undisclosed Location in the Hidden Valleys retreat inland from the Mississippi River in western Wisconsin, where he indulges in his first intellectual love, amateur Astronomy and stargazing.
Milwaukee, WI, 53202
|
|
|
