Mel Gibson's new movie: 'Apocalypto'

[Tonchi]

Originally Posted by russotto

Last time I checked, Mexicans (whether descended from Europeans or natives) were perfectly willing to let anyone "invade" their land to do movies provided enough money flowed to the right people. Somehow I doubt Gibson brought an army in.

Russotto, these are NOT MEXICANS. They do not consider themselves to be part of the country and never did. This is why the Mexican government did their best to wipe the Maya tribes off the face of the earth in the last century. Right now they have a rather active subversion going on down there. Have you ever heard of CHIAPAS? And they do not want our money or anybody else's, they just want to be left alone. Very alone. A respectable and harmless Eco-tourism ranch was closed down in that area and abandoned, under threat of death for all who did not march out when the guerrillas showed up. People who live in those jungles don't just kill you, they torture you and do not leave much to bury. If Mel stays in the part of Yucatan where Merida and Cancun (what's left of it) are, he will be safe. That's where the Federales hang out. But Cancun is not exactly the kind of background he is looking for.

[Cyclefrance]

Originally Posted by wolf

I know I hang out in very different circles, but I know more people that will stand in line for Apocalypto than I know will go to see Harry Potter next week.

(for which, incidentally, I already have IMAX tickets. not my fault. friend set it up)

Mel beat our 'Arry - ooooh, I don't think sooooo!

Having caught the promotional stuff on HP latest, it seems to have gone up a few notches on the 'reel 'em in' stakes. Quidditch World Cup, Dragons, and entering a much darker phase with superior CG stuff - all look like they will pull the crowds in even more. Shame that Robert Rankin (Apocalypso et al) writes such wierd stuff that any attempt at conversion on to film would cause any director to freak out well before completion.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Cyclefrance, go back and read Wolf's post again.

[CaliforniaMama]

To revive this old thread . . .

Who has seen it? What did you think? Why isn't anyone talking about it?

Where I am, it has become the most hated movie of the century.

Am I the only one who thought it was brilliant?

[wolf]

I am hoping to get out to see it, but with holiday madness and work madness I have not had time.

Native Americans are pretty P.O.'d. I've seen some very long screeds against the film, which are about half "this film sucks" and the other half "Mel Gibson is a racist bastard." The first sin, apparently, is casting a lead from the wrong tribe.

A coworker of mine saw it and was quite bored.

[CaliforniaMama]

Are you serious? How could anyone be bored?

Oh, I guess they COULD be. It wasn't as fast paced as many movies we are used to. I enjoyed the long segments of watching the people move through the jungle, watching the animals and just feeling very much a part of the scenery.

Yeah, lots of "why didn't they cast a Mayan lead" accusations are being flung around.

I really did love the movie, though, and feel like I'm the ONLY ONE.

[Griff]

I have not had a chance to see it but I'm expecting good things.

[CaliforniaMama]

Here is a talk with the archaeologist that consulted on the film:

http://www.archaeology.org/0701/etc/conversation.html

Finally, someone who isn't riding the PC bandwagon!

[Tonchi]

Thank you for posting that article from the Archaeology Magazine, it covers a lot of things I wanted to discuss when I planned to reopen this thread. Unfortunately, the movie has not yet arrived here and I wanted to see it before, but I have seen many interviews with the actors (in Spanish) and quite a few filmclips and read at least 8 reviews that came out during the first week the film was available. It appears that Apocalypto was rushed into release and sent to certain media outlets so that it would make the cut for Oscar nomination, and the rest of us can see it eventually.

First I want to say that this is not going to be an easy movie for most people to watch. Even if you like your blood and guts at horror-movie level, there is no plot to captivate you in between the slaughter. It appears that Mel Gibson took all the FX he learned from making the Passion and brought it to the jungles of Mexico. But this is not gratuitous violence, this is the way these pre-Colombian people really lived. It's not that life was cheap then, they believed your life was borrowed and the marker could be called at any time by those in authority, or the gods, if they needed it. Blood was the food of the gods, and they fed their gods often and heavily.

They had knives made from spalled obsidian and flints, they were sharp as razors and they knew how to use them. Warfare was constant throughout the Maya civilization but RITUALIZED: mostly they had forays into neighboring territories or pissing contests between noble leaders or knights of various power centers where you knocked down and captured somebody on the other side who was then required to present himself for sacrifice at the appropriate time and place. At the time of this movie, the larger cities of the classic period had disappeared several hundred years ago and the civilization was in decline. Far from the romanticized view of the indigenous people living in harmony with the land, the Maya had devastated their environment, were short on food, authority was breaking down, towns were now fighting for total conquest of their neighbors and evidence exists that cannibalism may have been more common than previously believed due to famine. So Mel went to a lot of trouble to research and show the authentic feel of the times; by most accounts he was successful except the historians agree that what he showed at the ending could not possibly have taken place at the time in which he places his story.

No Indians were harmed in the making of this movie, nor were their traditions disrespected. Shamans and elders were consulted, and as told in the Archaeology article, the appropriate politicians were paid off. I have no illusions about how long Mel will be involved in his "improvement of the quality of life" projects in the area, but he did what he had to do and it seems to have turned out well for everybody.

The Indian actors who were interviewed said the makeup crew was all Italians (no doubt Passion veterans). There were communication problems because the cast and supporting actors spoke Spanish or several Meso-American dialects, most of the crew was European, Gibson of course speaks English, you get the picture, but everything was planned pretty well and it all came off in very high quality. During this time, we know there was a serious problem with storms and flooding in the area and Mel had also begun to drink heavily (which culminated with him back in rehab after his embarrassing meltdown during that traffic stop in LA).

The interview with the Indian who plays Jaguar Paw was really interesting. After he got the part, Mel put him on a diet and sent him to the gym to turn his body into what they thought a warrior ought to look like.

The main reason I am looking forward to seeing this movie is because it appears to be authentic. I have been all over that area and the thing that always did not fit in my mind was how it must have looked with all the "average people" living in the areas around the huge ceremonial centers. Those centers and the rulers who had them built were supported by huge numbers of farmers and wood cutters, and finally I will see how it was for them. The Yucatan is not an ideal place to live: the weather is hellish in the summer and hurricanes are always offshore to wipe the place flat, yet the first great North American civilization rose from there. If Mel did his homework as well as they claim, I will really enjoy this movie.

[Pangloss62]

One should consider the acknowledged influence of Mel's dad, Hutton Gibson. They are ideologically joined at the hip.


Mr. Gibson Senior is said to be an "expert" on "The New World Order."

Basically, Gibson, and especially his father, are both somewhat obsessed Catholics that are very much against what they see as our decadent and misguided contemporary culture. Appocalypto is a heavy-handed, cultural critique of today's Western society, especially its pernicious cities.This critique also comes with a prophetic warning regarding "The New World Order." Gibson uses (misuses) Mayan and tribal cultures as a symbolic trope to highlight the government/private sector dichotomy: immoral, greedy government city vs. family-oriented self-sustaining kin group. Gibson doesn't need to be historically or ethnographically accurate with his use of Mayan civilization. He wants to make a point.

Let's listen to his father:

"We're going to have to do something now in this country
because that government is useless. There's a line the
Declaration of Independence where somebody abolishes
or sets aside or misgoverns, it is our privilege the constitution,
it is the people's obligation to abolish that government. I think
there is a way... There is a bloodless way to do it if we can
swing it: secession. Just get all states to secede from the
government and leave it there high and dry. The alternative
is eventually they are going to clamp down on us and we are
going to have the same terror and we are going to have to
revolt with a gun or we are going to face the same (governmental)
terror...We're going to have to do something fairly soon,
because the longer it goes, the more power they get and
the less we have."

It's easy to see how Apocalypto uses the great Mayan city as a symbol of government power run amok. They need sacrifices (taxes) to keep going, and they prey on the innocent (villagers minding their own business) to get what they need to maintain their immoral society. It's actually quite obvious what the Gibson's are trying to tell those willing to go see his work, another reason Mel funds his own movies of late; he controls the message.


These are the "good" villagers who've yet to be absorbed into the evil city.


The evil Mayan city with its overlords (government).

So it should not surprise anyone that Mel and his dad simply "use" Mayan culture to make a point about the coming "New World Order." But some anthropologists and archeologists feel obligated to point out the flaws in their depiction of Mayan culture:

"First, a typical Maya village is shown as an unorganized
group of jungle people who appear to subsist on hunting
alone. The Maya were an agricultural people with a very
structured social and economic system. Even small villages
in the hinterlands of large cities were connected to some
political center. The jungle people in Gibson's movie are
flabbergasted at the sight of the Maya city, exclaiming that
they have never seen such buildings. The truth is, pyramids
of comparable size were never more than 20 kilometers
away from anywhere in the Maya world, be they occupied
or abandoned.

Second, Mayan city people are shown as violent extremists
bent on harvesting innocent villagers to provide flesh for
sacrifice and women for slaves, leaving the children to die
alone in the jungle. Hundreds of men are sacrificed on an
Aztec-style sacrificial stone, their headless bodies thrown
into a giant ditch reminiscent of a Holocaust documentary
or a scene from "The Killing Fields." Problem is, there exists
no archaeological, historic or ethnohistoric data to suggest
that any such mass sacrifices -- numbering in the thousands,
or even hundreds -- took place in the Maya world."

Then there was this college Prof who, to his chagrin, made his class see the movie; here's a clip from the article:

He took issue with the fact that, in his mind, the movie
presents an overly simplified situation that sets up civilization
as evil and unfettered life in the jungle as pure.

"But you learned from this that civilization is bad, and all that
learning stuff is bad, so I hope that you've learned from this
to wander off from Vanderbilt, not even finish your exams and
go off into the woods and hunt pigs sadistically," he told his students.

But again, there is no reason to expect the Gibson's to be true to facts because that's not what they care about. Furthermore, their grasp of just what "history" is as a discipline is a bit shaky:

"There's always this conceit among historians, particularly
European historians, that history only began when they
arrived - which of course is not the case," he said.

"I thought it would be interesting to tell a story that wasn't
from the New World point of view."

All I would say to Mel is that the word "prehistoric" is in our language for a reason; that's why we have archeologists and anthropologists to tell us about the stuff that was not written down by conceited Europeans.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...sn=001&sc=1000


http://ww4report.com/node/2898/

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazett...1-df828ce3b880

[Flint]

But, are they wrong?

[Undertoad]

Yes. The bloodless way to change the government is by voting.

[Flint]

Oh, I'm sorry. I don't actually know what I'm talking about.

[CaliforniaMama]

Originally Posted by Pangloss62

But again, there is no reason to expect the Gibson's to be true to facts because that's not what they care about. Furthermore, their grasp of just what "history" is as a discipline is a bit shaky:

"There's always this conceit among historians, particularly
European historians, that history only began when they
arrived - which of course is not the case," he said.

Sorry, but in my opinion, this is just a tad overly pejorative. Mel Gibson is an artist, working in a field of art. As with all artists, representation is a matter of opinion, interpretation and choice of what to present in the work of art.

There is not one single historical movie made that is 100% true or accurate, so it feels a little unfair to me to single Gibson out for this particular critique.

Of course the Europeans believe it all started with them. The Arabs all believe it started with them, too. All dominant cultures with long histories will naturally see the world as it relates to them and them alone. This is a sociological fact. Perhaps a necessary fact. It may be what helps a culture to become and remain dominant. It could be called self-confidence, but is usually referred to as arrogance.

I personally don't see why movies like these create such polarization based on "true history" and "fact." There have been so many wonderful movies made based on history with all sorts of composites to represent far more than could ever be presented if we kept it strictly to the facts.

The new CIA movie, "The Good Shepherd," was recently reviewed by an ex-CIA agent and he said pretty much the same thing. That movie follows the spirit of the CIA, if the letter and verse of how it was done. Some things were tweaked for art, some were composites, but by and large it presents the idea it set out to present. I think "Apolcalypto" did the same thing and doesn't deserve the microscope critique it seems to be attracting.

BTW, Tonchi, I like the way you framed and explained the movie the best of anything I've read or seen. When you see the movie, you won't be disappointed!

[yesman065]

I am looking forward to seeing it - it looks to be visually stimulating and apparently I can learn a little "wrong history" too.