Apocalypto
For four years Mr. Gibson has been crucified by the media and Anti-Defamation league for producing a Jesus film and the masses responded angrily by paying the filmmaker a billion dollars to make more movies. The message sent was that non-Christians will not be cultural gatekeepers of Jesus. Imagine a Christian group demanding that a Jewish director change his Moses movie to suit their bullying tactics or suffer a lifetime of media abuse. The media set a climate in which metrollectual lemmings could Mel bash and be hip, Gentile and Jew alike, without ever seeing his movie. This remarkable hypocrisy created an undercurrent of outrage in the vast majority that simmers today. His recent and stupid militant zionism remark reads more like media self-fulfilling prophecy after years of national abuse that would have done in a weaker man. He apologized, those offended hated him before The Passion came out because they were told to, they will hate him the rest of his life because they are ‘hurt’ by Mel, and they will spend the rest of their lives trying to kill or silence the public figure. The pre-Passion campaign was really ‘Shock and Awe’, it backfired bigtime and I will never forget it. The relentless campaign against Mr. Gibson was so appalling that I will see every film he ever makes the rest of his life.
This handsome, taught film compliments Mr. Gibson’s the Passion and Braveheart. Apocalypto boldly talks in Mayan tongue about a peaceful tribe living off the land only to be saddled into the sport of sacrifice. Adults not slaughtered are carted off to a city of stone for beheading or sexual slavery. The hero’s journey takes us to Sin City then back to his loved ones only to view the birth of Spain’s dominance in a massive land that was once jungle and tribe. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Some of these brief passages remind me of Malick’s 2005 The New World or The End of the Spear; natives confronted with worlds beyond their grasp.
Physical brutality is a human trait and finance has taken its place in a no less barbarous fashion. I recently saw ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’, a depression era film depicting the insanity of dance marathons for entertainment, a local Roller Ball of sorts pardon the loose association. Apacolypto is presented plainly and beautifully in an original epic of very contemporary proportions which juxtaposes the local, national and international pressures humans endure. Along these lines the agrarian state seems a decent stop, armed humans and tamed land. The film argues the smaller the better, and there is some truth to this. Much as computers have allowed the autonomy of small business, the earth’s clean power can be harnessed by any forward thinking land owner who also wants high tech. Go see ‘Who Killed The Electric Car?’ for example.
There is a sweetness to the jungle that filmmakers flock to, yet living off the land with a pelt and spear is an ugly game for those in glass houses of metropolis, cocooned by inbred intellectual fantasy from the violent kernels of civilization. Mr. Gibson gets at this in his picture, one of gravity, strength and spirituality that can be gleaned in every rock and waterway the human being tramples or nurtures to enjoy his home on the planet. Mr. Gibson’s films are not for the faint of heart, which is to say he is an artist. It’s always harder to look at the underbelly of civilization, where pearls of wisdom lie beneath. Definite top 10 of the year.
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