APOCALYPTO
Director: Mel Gibson Stars: Rudy Youngblood, Raoul Trujillo, Rodolfo Palacios, Gerardo Taracena, Jonathan Brewer, Fernando Hernandez, Carlos Ramos, Dalia Hernandez
Reviewed by GREG KING
The recent AFI award winning Australian film Ten Canoes explored 1000 years of indigenous culture and history in an engaging and accessible fashion, even though the film was told in original aboriginal dialects. Similarly, Mel Gibson’s latest film Apocalypto takes place 500 years ago and explores the end of the once powerful Mayan civilisation. As with his previous film The Passion Of The Christ, the dialogue has been spoken in the local Yucatec dialect, using subtitles another risky creative decision. Ironically, both Apocalypto and Ten Canoes are likely to square off against each other during the upcoming awards season in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
But unlike Rolf De Heer, who collaborated closely with the aboriginal people of Ramingining for his film, Gibson is not so much concerned with culture and historical accuracy here – Apocalypto is a visceral and visual experience, and a pretty damn good one at that! It is also a very violent movie – graphically and relentlessly so. This brutal masculine world and unapologetic depiction of bloody violence is almost a trademark of Gibson’s work behind the camera – consider the spectacular battle scenes of Braveheart, and the torrid intensity of the flagellation sequence in The Passion - and Apocalypto is no exception.
“A great civilisation cannot be conquered from outside until it has been destroyed from within,” says the quote from historian Will Durant at the start of the film. Apocalypto suggests that the descent into decadence and human sacrifice marked the beginning of the end for the Mayan civilisation, which finally ended with the arrival of the Spanish conquerors. The film primarily plays as an adventure/action movie that ultimately offers little insight in to culture or history.
The central character is Jaguar Paw (played by newcomer Rudy Youngblood), the son of a village chieftain, who lives in a small village with his young son and pregnant wife. Soon after returning from a hunting trip, the village is attacked by mysterious armed warriors. The women are raped and the villages tied up, beaten and taken away as prisoners. The children are left behind. Jaguar Paw’s heavily pregnant wife is trapped down a deep pit. The villagers are led through the jungle to a huge Mayan city. There they are either sold as slaves of given to the religious leaders and offered as a human sacrifice to appease their Gods.
Jaguar Paw manages to escape, and is relentlessly hunted by a fearsome warrior Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo, who has an imperious presence, rather like Yul Brynner). Jaguar Paw uses his hunting skills and knowledge of the forests to outwit and outfight his determined pursuers and rescue his trapped wife. The final half-hour is a gripping chase through the jungle. Apocalypto also concludes with the arrival of Spanish conquerors, which was the true apocalypse suggested by the title.
The film has been beautifully shot on locations in the rainforests of Catemaco, Mexico, and Costa Rica, by ace cinematographer Dean Semler, using revolutionary new digital techniques. The construction of the sets, particularly the enormous Mayan city is spectacular. And Gibson’s use of non-professional actors is effective and adds to the film’s authenticity. Youngblood in particular has a dynamic and charismatic screen presence, and is able to cope with the very physical demands of his role.
By the end of Apocalypto you may not know all that much about Mayan culture – apart from the fact that they were hunters, farmers and engaged in human sacrifices to appease their gods – and why it ended so abruptly, but you will be left physically drained and exhausted by it. Apocalypto may not be a film of broad appeal, but on a technical level it is certainly a film to admire.
****
Reviewed by PETER MALONE
With a name like Apocalypto and a director like Mel Gibson, this film could be about anything. As it is, it is an immersion of the audience in the last, dying days of the Mayan civilisation.
The film itself offers no background explanation as to the Mayans and their history. Obviously, much of the history is speculation, information coming from archaeology and conclusions drawn from what remains of a civilisation which, except for its buildings and ruins, is lost.
The film opens with a quotation from scholar Will Durant stating that dying civilisations decay from within before they are destroyed from outside. Apocalypto presents a society of hunters who are menaced by lethal warriors who plunder, rape and kill (with quite some visual impact) and who enslave their victims so that they can be sold in markets to an effete nobility or can be slaughtered as human sacrifices (quartered and their hearts cut out – memories of Braveheart – and then beheaded at the top of the high temple staircase so that their heads can roll and bounce down to the bloodthirsty crowds and then be impaled). Gibson evokes the bread and circus atmosphere of the Roman arenas as well as the lance and arrow gladiatorial pursuits of victims by the temple guards.
Gibson has decided to tell the story of a hero, a hero who is a victim, a hero who has to endure almost unendurable torture and suffering. This means that Apocalypto is definitely a Mel Gibson film in terms of subject and treatment and the visual, visceral presentation of pain. William Wallace and his execution, Jesus and his passion and death, were not exceptions to Gibson’s concerns.
We can see now how Mel Gibson’s sensibilities are strong, male, suffering-oriented, focused on heroic endurance with some kind of hope that the heritage is redemption and freedom.
The language of the film is Yucatec. Gibson’s films contribute to a mainstream’s acceptance of sub-titles.
The first part of Apocalypto shows the peaceful and happy hunting villagers. It opens with a chase and a division of the meats – interrupted by an ominous appearance of some displaced tribes people. However, there is camaraderie, respect for elders, strong leadership and earthy jokes about sex and families.
Then comes the attack in all its brutality, massacre and the enslavement of the warriors, their trek through forest, river and cliffs to the centre of ‘civilisation’ with its temples, priests, sacrifices and atmosphere of superstition and appeasement of the Gods.
In the tradition of Run Of The Arrow, The Naked Prey or A Man Called Horse, the Mayan leader, Jaguar Paws (Rudy Youngblood) endures extraordinary pain and danger to outrun his pursuers and rescue his pregnant wife and child.
And, there coming to the shore, are the ships of the conquistadors and their friar chaplains. The era of the Mayans is over.
This is not a particularly appealing film. Rather, it is one that can be admired on a storytelling and technical bravura level – an example of cinematic ethnography.
Reviewed by MARCUS SINCLAIR
Mel Gibson's latest, deals with the ancient Mayan civilisation that flowered and bloomed in the dense jungles of Guatemala and the Yucatan peninsula of Central America from approximately 300 to 1500 CE - a civilisation, according to this movie, whose people were well advanced in architecture and built massive sky-high pyramids for the sole purpose of human sacrifice to appease the unpredictable actions and insatiable thirst of their gods.
From what I can glean from the history books they also were well advanced in the arts - sculpture and wall paintings, the study of the heavenly bodies, pictographic writing, had developed a calendar more accurate than that of Europe at this time, and in mathematics they evolved the concept of the zero. But none of this concerns Mel. His blood lust is up once again and he, compared with this previous effort, excels himself. Blood and gore flow freely, brutality is rife, suffering is the norm as no doubt it was in those far off days. Life, as Thomas Hobbes has written, was indeed "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."
Experts were assembled to aid with this production. Mel has striven for authenticity by filming on location in the jungles of Mexico, and using dialogue throughout spoken in Yucatec Maya with sub-titles. Many of his players are indigenous people with little or no acting experience. The images captured by cinematographer Dean Semler are stunning: colour, composition, and clarity. Often the camera is subjective - we see the action as if through the eyes of the central character, Jaguar Paw.
At the narrative level the film is simplistic and over long. Too frequently scenes are lingered upon and the incidents are repetitive. There are no sub-texts, and the hero, Jaguar Paw, is yet another "super" man who endures intense suffering, both physical and mental, and faces horrendous hardships to be reunited with his loved ones.
For all its stark realism, authenticity and excitement we are still basically in the realm of the graphic novel of say Frank Miller with his Sin City or Alan Moore's From Hell, the only difference being that in Apocalypto the images move, are enhanced by exquisite colour, music and various sounds. It is realistic enough to make us shudder with disgust at man's inhumanity to his fellow creatures, and to hear just sufficient to enhance the feeling. Mel Gibson knows exactly what the bulk of the cinema paying public desires. He gives it to them - thrills, action, suffering, brutality, horror - loads of it, but in so doing he skillfully manages to keep within the bounds of social propriety for he wants the cinemas to be kept full not empty. This is his business and, give credit where credit is due, he does it superbly.