Saturday, December 09, 2006
Friday Movie Review ( late)
Went alone to see Apocalypto at the appropriate theater here in Denver, the Mayan, on Broadway, and thought it was pretty darn good. It owes a little to a very fine 60s movie that had, for a time, a profound effect on my life, Cornel Wilde's The Naked Prey. I have nothing but respect for a director who will use the original language (or as close as possible) of the time and place he depicts, so that 99% of the world needs subtitles just to understand a single word said. That takes guts and, if anything the director Mel Gibson has those. There is a vivid sense of realism in the film and a near overload of detail, but I disagree about some of the details. There will soon be released a pretty bullsh-- Viking/Skraeling movie called Pathfinder and its German director said a few months ago that everything we think we know about the Vikings is wrong--they were much more cruel and violently depraved than they have been portrayed so far.
It is my opinion that the Mayans were less cruel but more violently depraved than is shown in the movie. Let me be more specific. I don't believe the bad guys would have used the captives as target practice for various long range weapons, bow and arrow, atlatl aided light spear, staff-sling. I also don't believe they would just let the bodies of the sacrificed rot in big piles. It was much worse than that.
The Asian cavemen who entered North America at Alaska and spread rapidly down to Tierra del Fuego, approximately 10,000 years ago (after the ice fields had melted again in the north and the short faced bear went extinct) killed nearly every animal that could have been domesticated, especially in Mesoamerica. Two exceptions were the turkey and the dog. The dog, which is a carnivore, is a competitor, neither a proper prey nor herd animal. And we all know how quickly one gets tired of turkey. So the only meat really available, that didn't have to be hunted, was what used to be called long pig in Melanesia, that is, humans. There is no doubt that the Aztecs practiced a government run program of cannibalism during their empire and little doubt (to me) that in the very late part of the post classical period, the Mayans did too. Here is tepid support for my belief from two articles. There was a drought going on too; people starving to death often go cannibal to avoid it.
The main bad guy is named Zero Wolf; think about that for a few seconds. No really, you need to think about that name more. I'll get back to it. Almost all the actors are unknown or little known and most of them are just terrific. The hero of the piece, Jaguar Paw, could have won an Oscar if Mel hadn't driven drunk earlier this year. He really is that good. OK back to the main bad guy's name--zero is a mathematical concept, a space keeper in number writing that neither the Romans nor Greeks at the heights of their civilizations came up with. It was probably an Indian concept which reached the West through Arabia and was attributed to the Arab messengers. The Chinese claim to have invented it too, but I digress. If the guy really is named Zero, that means that, before there was any contact between the West and the Mayans, which was in 1517 for the Yucatan area, the Mayans came up with the concept of zero independently. Mind-blowing.
Were there wolves in the jungle? Tougher to call but probably (there were wolves in the Indian rain forest--who do you think raised Mowgli?). The actor, Raoul Trujillo, who plays this interestingly named character has been in a lot of movies and was memorable in the harrowing Black Robe a few years back and more recently in the little seen The New World. Mel's not in this one either. There are white guys in the movie though--for about 10 seconds.
Some people seem to doubt the heart cutting out part. They seem to think obsidian is not sharper than steel or that the ribs are too tough to reach through (you cut below the ribs and up through the diaphragm--or at least we do that with elk and deer we shoot--it's easy to get the heart out). I personally think it would be difficult to yank one out, but completely believe that it would still be beating if you could.
The film is beautiful and has an exhausting but measured pace that keeps you on the edge of your seat once the bad stuff starts happening. As the captives leave the rain forest and enter the civilization, the place gets a lot uglier. A rain forest without trees is pretty much a damp nothing. They are felling the trees to cook the limestone rocks they surface mine to make the quicklime coating for the buildings. You have to deforest in order for the civilization to fall, or so I'm told, but I always thought the forest was cleared for corn and beans, etc. Who knew about the quicklime?
The Mayans in the film have piercings everywhere, and tattoos and ritual scars and stones attached to their bodies, their faces and ears and teeth. The whole of the Mayan upper crust has a few pounds of jade pebbles affixed somehow to their faces, and more hairstyles than most heterosexuals could ever imagine. It really is disconcerting, indeed the whole journey to the city is as disorienting as some science fiction films, which in a way it resembles.
Some people have compared this film to Mad Max II, known here as The Road Warrior, but it resembles that little beauty of a film (a through the looking glass synthesis of the Iliad and the Aeneid's parts about Troy) not in the slightest. Well, maybe the lone hero 'running' and the bad guys chasing but the Cornel Wilde film is the perfect model for that.
This is one of the few modern movies where the Spanish conquistadors are a force for good, indeed their very presence is life saving. That might be the jack-Catholic in Mel Gibson, making it clear to us that the region before the arrival of at least semi enlightened European Christians was more like hell than paradise. There doesn't appear to be much of a theme other than that (although I'm thinking about the story the one armed guy tells and about the prophesy of the diseased girl (smallpox? that would put it after 1517 then) who foretells what will happen to the mean guys so clearly). But who needs a theme? It is a rough movie, not for the feint of heart and a rousing good action flick that takes us to a place none of us has ever seen, no matter how often we have visited the Yucatan. Not quite a masterpiece but a very good try.
It is my opinion that the Mayans were less cruel but more violently depraved than is shown in the movie. Let me be more specific. I don't believe the bad guys would have used the captives as target practice for various long range weapons, bow and arrow, atlatl aided light spear, staff-sling. I also don't believe they would just let the bodies of the sacrificed rot in big piles. It was much worse than that.
The Asian cavemen who entered North America at Alaska and spread rapidly down to Tierra del Fuego, approximately 10,000 years ago (after the ice fields had melted again in the north and the short faced bear went extinct) killed nearly every animal that could have been domesticated, especially in Mesoamerica. Two exceptions were the turkey and the dog. The dog, which is a carnivore, is a competitor, neither a proper prey nor herd animal. And we all know how quickly one gets tired of turkey. So the only meat really available, that didn't have to be hunted, was what used to be called long pig in Melanesia, that is, humans. There is no doubt that the Aztecs practiced a government run program of cannibalism during their empire and little doubt (to me) that in the very late part of the post classical period, the Mayans did too. Here is tepid support for my belief from two articles. There was a drought going on too; people starving to death often go cannibal to avoid it.
The main bad guy is named Zero Wolf; think about that for a few seconds. No really, you need to think about that name more. I'll get back to it. Almost all the actors are unknown or little known and most of them are just terrific. The hero of the piece, Jaguar Paw, could have won an Oscar if Mel hadn't driven drunk earlier this year. He really is that good. OK back to the main bad guy's name--zero is a mathematical concept, a space keeper in number writing that neither the Romans nor Greeks at the heights of their civilizations came up with. It was probably an Indian concept which reached the West through Arabia and was attributed to the Arab messengers. The Chinese claim to have invented it too, but I digress. If the guy really is named Zero, that means that, before there was any contact between the West and the Mayans, which was in 1517 for the Yucatan area, the Mayans came up with the concept of zero independently. Mind-blowing.
Were there wolves in the jungle? Tougher to call but probably (there were wolves in the Indian rain forest--who do you think raised Mowgli?). The actor, Raoul Trujillo, who plays this interestingly named character has been in a lot of movies and was memorable in the harrowing Black Robe a few years back and more recently in the little seen The New World. Mel's not in this one either. There are white guys in the movie though--for about 10 seconds.
Some people seem to doubt the heart cutting out part. They seem to think obsidian is not sharper than steel or that the ribs are too tough to reach through (you cut below the ribs and up through the diaphragm--or at least we do that with elk and deer we shoot--it's easy to get the heart out). I personally think it would be difficult to yank one out, but completely believe that it would still be beating if you could.
The film is beautiful and has an exhausting but measured pace that keeps you on the edge of your seat once the bad stuff starts happening. As the captives leave the rain forest and enter the civilization, the place gets a lot uglier. A rain forest without trees is pretty much a damp nothing. They are felling the trees to cook the limestone rocks they surface mine to make the quicklime coating for the buildings. You have to deforest in order for the civilization to fall, or so I'm told, but I always thought the forest was cleared for corn and beans, etc. Who knew about the quicklime?
The Mayans in the film have piercings everywhere, and tattoos and ritual scars and stones attached to their bodies, their faces and ears and teeth. The whole of the Mayan upper crust has a few pounds of jade pebbles affixed somehow to their faces, and more hairstyles than most heterosexuals could ever imagine. It really is disconcerting, indeed the whole journey to the city is as disorienting as some science fiction films, which in a way it resembles.
Some people have compared this film to Mad Max II, known here as The Road Warrior, but it resembles that little beauty of a film (a through the looking glass synthesis of the Iliad and the Aeneid's parts about Troy) not in the slightest. Well, maybe the lone hero 'running' and the bad guys chasing but the Cornel Wilde film is the perfect model for that.
This is one of the few modern movies where the Spanish conquistadors are a force for good, indeed their very presence is life saving. That might be the jack-Catholic in Mel Gibson, making it clear to us that the region before the arrival of at least semi enlightened European Christians was more like hell than paradise. There doesn't appear to be much of a theme other than that (although I'm thinking about the story the one armed guy tells and about the prophesy of the diseased girl (smallpox? that would put it after 1517 then) who foretells what will happen to the mean guys so clearly). But who needs a theme? It is a rough movie, not for the feint of heart and a rousing good action flick that takes us to a place none of us has ever seen, no matter how often we have visited the Yucatan. Not quite a masterpiece but a very good try.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 5:24 PM 
