More On "Apocalypto"

W. admires Mel Gibson:

There are two true-life Hollywood success stories which fill me with admiration for the people involved. One is the story of Sylvester Stallone's breakthrough where he wrote a screenplay, but refused to sell it unless he could play the lead; after it was made, the movie won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1976. The other story is Mel Gibson's idea of making a story of Jesus's crucifixion from a Christian point of view, and historically accurate even to the languages spoken by the actors. Hollywood refused to support it, so Gibson made it with his own money, and it became one of the most-watched films of all time. After that, I resolved to see whatever movie he made next.

Apocalypto is one of those rare movies which are impossible to leave to use the restroom once the action gets going (Titanic is the only other one I can think of at the moment). After the first half hour of character setup, once the fighting started, there was no let-up until the end.

To me, the most important contribution that it made was to show a native American culture, the Mayans, in a predatory light. The current "progressive" view of native societies in general, and native Americans in particular, is governed by a childish utopian fantasy, partly 1700s Rousseau, and partly 1960s counterculture. On the contrary, anyone familiar with archeology knows that native American societies were consumed by continuous warfare, just like contemporaneous European societies. Some recent movies (Black Robe, Last of the Mohicans) have shown individual Indians acting realistically, with self-serving motives. However, Apocalypto's contribution of bringing a native American society within the circle of Man's Inhumanity to Man is a much-needed wake-up call for the reverential "Great Spirit" paradigm.

The second attribute of the film which commands respect is the way the primitive society (not the Mayans) was portrayed during the first half-hour. Watching it, I had the feeling that I was seeing real aborigines living their actual lives - there was no sense of actors acting a script written by someone else. This part of the movie was filmmaking of the highest order.

Another well-done part of the film was the feeling when the aborigines are brought to the Mayan city. After seeing their primitive lifestyle, juxtaposed against the wealth, technology, organization, diversity, brutality, chaos, and noise of the Mayan city, one can feel something of the shock that millions of captives and slaves throughout world history must have felt when brought to their captor's cities; a feeling of fear, bewilderment, wonder, confusion, fascination, dread, and hopelessness.

Although I enjoyed Apocalypto, it also had some flaws, which it shares with hundreds of other movies. The second half of the film is a relentless pursuit of the hero by his captors. It reminds one of the Fugitive, or even the Terminator. However, the hero takes too much abuse - he is injured too severely, too often, and he endures too much, to be realistic. At its core, Apocalypto is another movie where one simply has to suspend disbelief in order to appreciate it.

Mel Gibson took a huge risk by funding "Passion of the Christ" with his own money, but the tremendous success of the movie meant he also reaped the entire profit. Filmmaking is a very expensive venture, and most filmmakers are under tremendous pressures to cut corners for the sake of money. In addition, one or two failures can destroy a filmmaker's career.

Gibson's big success makes him one of the very few filmmakers, perhaps the only one ever, completely released from those pressures. He could make nothing but duds for the rest of his life, and he'd be OK. But there's no indication at the moment he's going to make duds. It's an enviable place to be!

Regarding the relentless pursuit, and the impossibly narrow escapes, Gibson simply follows the path blazed by Steven Spielberg, particularly 1981's "Raiders of the Lost Ark". This class of hyperdriven adventure movie tends to make me ill, so improbable the escapes, but it certainly leads to a thrilling cinematic experience.

Gibson also uses the "childish utopian fantasy, partly 1700s Rousseau, and partly 1960s counterculture" of portraying simple village life as a kind of pastoral. This is not to criticize Gibson, only to suggest that the fantasy is very deeply embedded in our culture, and probably will be there always. Gibson uses the fantasy, even if only to break it, for the purpose of the story.

I also liked the attention paid to rendering Mayan/Aztec civilization. The Spanish did much to try to erase that experience from world culture, and it takes scholarship, imaginative leaps and attention to detail to recreate it.

It's interesting to ponder how the American Southwest fit into the jigsaw of Mayan/Aztec civilization. It apparently was a satellite of the greater civilization, in some way. A considerable amount of turquoise from Cerrillos, NM ended up in Central America. The ball courts found universally in Central America are found as far north as southern Arizona, but, interestingly, not on the Colorado Plateau, signifying some kind of cultural or religious frontier along the Mogollon Rim. And I've often marvelled how the archaeologists at Chaco Canyon excavated macaw bones there. Macaws are native to Costa Rica and Panama. Amazing!