This from Rex Reed:
At the screening I attended, security guards flanked the entrance doors, opening and inspecting the contents of every critic’s briefcase, purse and backpack in a search for recording equipment. What a waste of time. Who would want to tape more than two hours of a movie nobody wants to see, featuring hundreds of people nobody has ever heard of, speaking a language nobody can understand?
Apocalypto
Oh yes, the KKK/kike-hating contingent. That's a demographic any filmmaker would be proud to attract. Next week, a revival of Jud Süss!!!!criddic3 wrote:The biggest draw will be for people who want to show their support for Gibson
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
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Sonic Youth
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I have had a few conversations with people who say they'd be interested, but the fact is a lot of people are turned off by subtitles. The biggest draw will be for people who want to show their support for Gibson, since the controversy has simmered down quite a bit (especially in the wake of Michael Richards' disaster recently). Admittedly, though, he has lost some support among his fan base. I don't think he's down for good and this film should do well at the box-office. Critics seem to like it so far. That helps.kooyah wrote:One thing I've been wondering about this film: how is it tracking? I haven't heard anyone talking about it. I don't know anyone who wants to see it. And whenever I see the trailer for it before a movie, it doesn't seem as though the audience is really responding to it in any way, which doesn't seem to be a good sign.
"Because here’s the thing about life: There’s no accounting for what fate will deal you. Some days when you need a hand. There are other days when we’re called to lend a hand." -- President Joe Biden, 01/20/2021
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Sonic Youth
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Apocalypto
John Hazelton in Los Angeles
Screendaily
Dir: Mel Gibson. US. 2006. 136mins.
True to the pre-release PR spin and healthy industry buzz, Mel Gibson's Apocalypto is less of a stodgy history lesson and more of a fleet-footed action adventure - albeit one with a highly unusual setting in the world of the ancient Maya. The action is sometimes thrilling and the evocation of the Maya's mysterious and violent civilisation is impressive. But it very much remains to be seen whether those elements can outweigh the film's commercial and creative liabilities - among them the subtitled Maya-language dialogue, a mostly unknown cast and Gibson's recently tarnished public image - and turn Apocalypto into another unlikely hit for its maverick director-producer and his Icon Productions.
Disney's Buena Vista optimistically opens the film on 2,500 North American screens this weekend, on the back of a marketing campaign aimed, like that for Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ, at niche groups as well as mainstream moviegoers. High audience awareness should ensure a strong opening, but in the long run Apocalypto may do well to match the $75.6m domestic gross achieved by Gibson's previous historical action movie, the Oscar-winning Braveheart.
Independents that have licensed the film from Icon will release Apocalypto in most international markets in the New Year, and they may find the blend of history and action to be a stronger draw for non-US audiences (Braveheart reached almost $135m outside North America). Results could be particularly strong in the Central American territories where the Maya once ruled and in the rest of Latin America.
Awards could, of course, make a big difference to the global box office. The film is eligible for the foreign-language Golden Globe and should be a strong contender; but in the Oscar race, where it will have to compete with English-language entries, it seems likely to remain an outsider.
The script by Gibson and first-time feature writer Farhad Safinia is set in the early 16th century, when Mayan civilisation was in decline. The story focuses on Jaguar Paw (Youngblood), a young husband and father living in a small jungle village. When raiders led by the fearsome Zero Wolf (Trujillo) attack the village, Jaguar Paw manages to hide his wife and child before being captured. Taken to a city of vast pyramids and worried citizens, he narrowly escapes being sacrificed to the Maya gods. But before he can return to the jungle and rescue his family he must escape Zero Wolf and his brutal warriors.
In its opening scenes, Apocalypto makes an unashamed play for the mainstream audience with farcical sex humour and even a grumpy mother-in-law character. But Gibson also introduces the bigger themes suggested by the title: the sense of impending doom in a civilisation that is destroying itself from within (modern parallels may be intended but they are barely hinted at in the action).
The big themes resurface from time to time, and they're brought to mind with a jolt in the story's last-minute surprise twist. Yet the film rarely makes its historical context explicit and doesn't manage to interweave it with the hero's personal narrative in the way that Braveheart did.
Instead, Apocalypto becomes the essentially timeless story of a man trying to protect what he loves from destruction, though the story is made to seem fresher by the unusual milieu.
There are some terrific set pieces, among them the pyramid-top sacrifice sequence (one of the most gruesome passages in a very gruesome film), Jaguar Paw's escape over a giant waterfall and his flight from Zero Wolf through the jungle. Their effect is heightened by the vivid and kinetic digital video cinematography (using Panavision's new Genesis camera system) of Dean Semler (Dances With Wolves).
Often, though, Gibson lets such sequences run on too long - literally, in the case of Jaguar Paw and Zero Wolf's drawn-out foot chase - or go over the top with blood-spurting gore.
The casting of mostly inexperienced Mexican and Central American performers, with a few Native American actors from the US and Canada in lead roles, works surprisingly well. In his acting debut, Youngblood gives Jaguar Paw an impressive physicality and an effective mix of cockiness and fear. And US veteran Trujillo (most recently seen in The New World) is neatly menacing as Zero Wolf.
John Hazelton in Los Angeles
Screendaily
Dir: Mel Gibson. US. 2006. 136mins.
True to the pre-release PR spin and healthy industry buzz, Mel Gibson's Apocalypto is less of a stodgy history lesson and more of a fleet-footed action adventure - albeit one with a highly unusual setting in the world of the ancient Maya. The action is sometimes thrilling and the evocation of the Maya's mysterious and violent civilisation is impressive. But it very much remains to be seen whether those elements can outweigh the film's commercial and creative liabilities - among them the subtitled Maya-language dialogue, a mostly unknown cast and Gibson's recently tarnished public image - and turn Apocalypto into another unlikely hit for its maverick director-producer and his Icon Productions.
Disney's Buena Vista optimistically opens the film on 2,500 North American screens this weekend, on the back of a marketing campaign aimed, like that for Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ, at niche groups as well as mainstream moviegoers. High audience awareness should ensure a strong opening, but in the long run Apocalypto may do well to match the $75.6m domestic gross achieved by Gibson's previous historical action movie, the Oscar-winning Braveheart.
Independents that have licensed the film from Icon will release Apocalypto in most international markets in the New Year, and they may find the blend of history and action to be a stronger draw for non-US audiences (Braveheart reached almost $135m outside North America). Results could be particularly strong in the Central American territories where the Maya once ruled and in the rest of Latin America.
Awards could, of course, make a big difference to the global box office. The film is eligible for the foreign-language Golden Globe and should be a strong contender; but in the Oscar race, where it will have to compete with English-language entries, it seems likely to remain an outsider.
The script by Gibson and first-time feature writer Farhad Safinia is set in the early 16th century, when Mayan civilisation was in decline. The story focuses on Jaguar Paw (Youngblood), a young husband and father living in a small jungle village. When raiders led by the fearsome Zero Wolf (Trujillo) attack the village, Jaguar Paw manages to hide his wife and child before being captured. Taken to a city of vast pyramids and worried citizens, he narrowly escapes being sacrificed to the Maya gods. But before he can return to the jungle and rescue his family he must escape Zero Wolf and his brutal warriors.
In its opening scenes, Apocalypto makes an unashamed play for the mainstream audience with farcical sex humour and even a grumpy mother-in-law character. But Gibson also introduces the bigger themes suggested by the title: the sense of impending doom in a civilisation that is destroying itself from within (modern parallels may be intended but they are barely hinted at in the action).
The big themes resurface from time to time, and they're brought to mind with a jolt in the story's last-minute surprise twist. Yet the film rarely makes its historical context explicit and doesn't manage to interweave it with the hero's personal narrative in the way that Braveheart did.
Instead, Apocalypto becomes the essentially timeless story of a man trying to protect what he loves from destruction, though the story is made to seem fresher by the unusual milieu.
There are some terrific set pieces, among them the pyramid-top sacrifice sequence (one of the most gruesome passages in a very gruesome film), Jaguar Paw's escape over a giant waterfall and his flight from Zero Wolf through the jungle. Their effect is heightened by the vivid and kinetic digital video cinematography (using Panavision's new Genesis camera system) of Dean Semler (Dances With Wolves).
Often, though, Gibson lets such sequences run on too long - literally, in the case of Jaguar Paw and Zero Wolf's drawn-out foot chase - or go over the top with blood-spurting gore.
The casting of mostly inexperienced Mexican and Central American performers, with a few Native American actors from the US and Canada in lead roles, works surprisingly well. In his acting debut, Youngblood gives Jaguar Paw an impressive physicality and an effective mix of cockiness and fear. And US veteran Trujillo (most recently seen in The New World) is neatly menacing as Zero Wolf.
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
Win Butler
One thing I've been wondering about this film: how is it tracking? I haven't heard anyone talking about it. I don't know anyone who wants to see it. And whenever I see the trailer for it before a movie, it doesn't seem as though the audience is really responding to it in any way, which doesn't seem to be a good sign.
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Big Magilla
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Another distortion of history to satisfay Gibson's lust for blood and violence. The Satellites nominated it for foregin language film and I suspect the Globes will do the same. The various guilds and AMPAS could nomiante it for various technical awards, but I don't see it winning any major awards. I doubt L.A. and N.Y. will touch it.
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Sonic Youth
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D'Angelo gave it a 65, a good score from him.
Variety and Hollywood Reporter's reviews are below. Could this be the surprise spoiler? Or - more than Mel's tirade and failure to designated a driver - could the overwhelming violence ruin its chances?
Apocalypto
By TODD MCCARTHY
Variety
Mel Gibson is always good for a surprise, and his latest is that "Apocalypto" is a remarkable film. Set in the waning days of the Mayan civilization, the picture provides a trip to a place one's never been before, offering hitherto unseen sights of exceptional vividness and power. In the wake of its director's recent outburst and unwanted publicity, commercial prospects remain anyone's guess, and those looking for a reason not to attend will undoubtedly find one, be it Gibson's tirade, the gore, the subtitles or outre subject matter. But blood-and-guts action audiences should eat this up, Gibson is courting Latinos, eco-political types will like the message and at least part of the massive "The Passion of the Christ" crowd should be curious, so strong biz is possible if these distinct constituencies are roused.
Despite the subject's inherent spectacle, conflict and societal interest, Central America's pre-Columbian history has scarcely been touched by filmmakers; Hollywood's only venture into the territory was the little-remembered 1963 quasi-epic "Kings of the Sun," with Yul Brynner and George Chakiris.
Cast largely with indigenous nonpros speaking the prevailing surviving dialect of the Mesoamericans, "Apocalypto" is exotic, wild, ferocious, teeming with startling incident and brutal violence.
With co-screenwriter Farhad Safinia, Gibson has cooked up a scenario that is fundamentally a survival and chase film, with a final act that trades on the human hunt motif of "The Most Dangerous Game" and Cornel Wilde's "The Naked Prey."
But both the grand conception of a civilization in decline and the extraordinary detail with which the society is presented make the picture much more than that, to the extent that it startlingly echoes another portent-laden year-end release, Alfonso Cuaron's "Children of Men;" one film is set in the past, the other in the near-future, one was made in Mexico by a Yank-Aussie, the other in Britain by a Mexican, but both are contemporaneously resonant stories of pursuit through poisoned, dangerous lands on the brink.
Starting at a run and seldom stopping for a breather, pic opens on an animal hunt that occasions a graphically gross two-prong practical joke that instantly humanizes the characters. It establishes the relaxed, intimate, sensual nature of family-oriented life in a small jungle settlement occupied by the fearsome-looking but free-spirited protags. Chief among them is Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), an athletic young man who has long flowing locks, sports tattoos, designed body scars, large ear adornments and a sort of chin plug, and wears nothing but a well-fitted loin cloth. His teeth are not quite as bad as those of his pals, which are very bad indeed.
Paradise comes to an abrupt end a half-hour in with the dawn attack of marauders who pillage with ruthless expertise. These guys are more heavily decorated than the locals, with bones through their noses and elsewhere. Two members of what the press notes identify as Holcane warriors stand out: the leader, Zero Wolf (the supremely imposing Raoul Trujillo), whose left arm and head are festooned with human and animal jaws, and the sadistic Snake Ink (Rodolfo Palacios, fantastically hateful), who, restrained from killing Jaguar Paw by Zero Wolf, instead murders the captive's father in front of him, launching an antagonism that runs through the picture. Both of these heavies could stay in costume and stride straight into another "Mad Max" film.
With his surviving fellow villagers, Jaguar Paw is bound and marched off through the jungle, but not before he's secreted his very pregnant wife Seven (Dalia Hernandez) and little son (Carlos Emilio Baez) in a deep pit, promising, rather against the odds, to return.
The greatest mystery surrounding the Mayan civilization is why it collapsed so suddenly. Gibson adroitly lines his film with hints of the numerous possible causes, including famine, disease, drought, increased warfare, a corrupt ruling class and general societal breakdown. A bedraggled group of emaciated natives is glimpsed moving through the forest early on, and the prisoners later pass by a haunted girl with "the sickness" who warns about the coming "blackness of day."
The long central section of "Apocalypto" is simply great epic cinema, with generous dollops of chilling horror and grisly human sacrifice. Production designer Tom Sanders makes a huge contribution to the captives' gradual entry into the great and chaotic Maya City. Each neighborhood is brilliantly detailed, from the derelict outlying shantytown to the industrial and more prosperous commercial districts, the slave market where the women are sold off and, finally, the staggering central plaza, where the first thing seen is a freshly detached human head being bounced down the long steps of a towering pyramid toward a frenzied crowd below.
Only then does it dawn on the shackled prisoners what's in store for them. At the summit preside dissolute royals as well as a high priest who, time and again, plunges a knife into a man's belly and, while the victim is still alive, tears out his still-beating heart as an offering to placate the gods to end the drought.
It takes a freakish act of nature to save Jaguar Paw, but he and the few other survivors are quickly made objects of sport in an arena, from which commences the long and eventful chase of Jaguar Paw by Zero Wolf and his minions back through the jungle. Double-whammy ending tips over into undue melodrama that some may find risible, and one aspect of the climax establishes the film's time frame as much later in Mayan history than one might have guessed.
Notwithstanding the fantastic sets, costumes, makeup, body and hair designs and natural locations, perhaps the greatest impression is made by the performers' faces, which are superbly photogenic and unlike any normally seen in movies. The attractive, agile Youngblood carries the film with room to spare, and is entirely convincing in his many dramatic moments as well as in the intense action. Casting director Carla Hool rates a huge bonus for tracking down the people who play everyone from the most savage looking warriors to the paralyzingly weird female aristocrats in the city.
One notable aspect of the characterizations is the general attitude toward death. The Mayans as portrayed here naturally fear it like anyone, but they accept it, just as they acknowledge physical pain as an everyday aspect of life. They are utterly without sentimentality, tears or remorse; when one is about to die, another will sincerely tell them, "Travel well," and that is that. Blood and violence is abundant, but doesn't feel exaggerated or out of line in relation to the material.
Production is a wonder. Dean Semler's camera moves relentlessly through the densest of foliage and over the roughest of terrain on locations near Veracruz and in the rainforests of Catemaco, with some additional shooting done in Costa Rica and the U.K.; Gibson clearly knew the impact the lenser of the second and third "Mad Max" films could deliver. More remarkable still is that pic was shot on the new high definition Genesis camera system. Without a doubt, "Apocalypto" is the best-looking big-budget film yet shot digitally; one can't tell it wasn't shot on film.
James Horner composed an uncharacteristically low-key and moody score, full of threatening, choral-like synthesizer growling, woodwind interludes and alarming percussive strikes.
---------------------------------------------------
Apocalypto
Kirk Honeycutt
Hollywood Reporter
It really began with his "Braveheart" more than a decade ago, though no one really noticed then because it obeyed all the conventions of a big Hollywood epic, albeit a very violent one. But Mel Gibson's career as a film director is becoming one long essay in human cruelty through the ages. Whatever spiritual messages devout Christians took from 2004's "The Passion of the Christ," its violence was pornographic.
In "Apocalypto," Gibson and co-writer Farhad Safinia turn to the Mayan civilization that dominated present-day Mexico and Central America from 2400 B.C. to the 15th century A.D. They ignore its advances in urban planning, mathematics, art, astronomy, agriculture and writing systems to dwell on its utter barbarity. Men hunt men, rape women and sacrifice victims by tearing hearts from quivering bodies with joyful ferocity.
This is no cheesy exploitation movie, though, but a first-rate epic build around one man's will to survive to rescue his family. In other words, in the good Hollywood tradition, it's got a hero, villain, damsel in distress, exotic natives and breathtaking vistas that evoke feelings of awe and dread. The guy knows how to make a heart-pounding movie; he just happens to be a cinematic sadist.
Gibson's well-publicized personal problems, the film's eye-catching key art and critics calling him a sadist probably add up to money in the bank for the Walt Disney Co. "Apocalypto" might not reach the $600 million worldwide grosses of "Passion," but it will attract a considerable international crowd. To his credit, there is never a dull moment.
The movie opens as the Mayan civilization is in its death throes, though no one knows it. We are in a tranquil rain forest where a small community of hunters and baby-makers live in ecological harmony with a nature that provides animals to slaughter and food to gather. Then the village is attacked by marauding mercenary warriors from the capital looking for sacrificial victims to assuage the gods for a drought and plague.
Men and a few women to be sold as slaves or concubines are brutally tied to long poles and marched through the rain forest to the Mayan city. There the men meet their fate atop a pyramid where they are painted blue, draped over an altar stone for an obsidian knife to plunge into the chest and rip out the heart with surgical skill, the heart going into a fire, the head chopped from the body and the corpse flung down the steps to the cackling glee of the assembled townsfolk. Do these guys know how to party or what?
The central figure is family man Jaguar Paw, played by Rudy Youngblood, an expressive and charismatic Native American with considerable athletic and thespian skills. All the actors are Native Americans, and the astute casting is arguably the best thing about this movie. Dalia Hernandez, a Mexican dancer and student, has a lovely face that catches the terror of Jaguar Paw's pregnant wife, who is left behind in the village well that first protects, then traps her and her child.
Canadian Jonathan Brewer plays comical sidekick Blunted, who is the butt of every joke. New Mexican actor Raoul Trujillo makes a sturdy foe as the warrior leader, Zero Wolf, who captures Jaguar Paw and his mates. His villainy is trumped by his sadistic underling Snake Ink -- don't you just love these Jacobean names? -- played by Mexican actor Rodolfo Palacios with zeal. And so it goes down to the smallest role, even a busybody mother-in-law instantly recognizable to many a suffering contemporary husband.
For the first 85 minutes, we along with the captives are dragged into a world of chaos and confusion on this frightening, arduous journey. The freshness of this world, nothing like it having appeared on film before, captures our imagination. Then, suddenly, thanks to divine intervention by solar eclipse, Jaguar Paw escapes his captors.
The movie turns into a much more conventional chase movie with Zero Wolf and his gang racing through the jungle to hunt down and kill Jaguar Paw. Yet the deeper the chase goes into the rain forest, the more the home court advantage swings to our hero. Soon we have a reverse "Deliverance," where the hillbilly is the good guy and every dreadful fate that befalls his pursuers gets cheers from the popcorn crowd.
Like "Passion," Gibson feels -- and he may be right here -- that ancient languages transport audiences into another time and place. The script has been translated into the Mayan dialect spoken in the Yucatan peninsula today. So the movie comes to us in subtitles, my favorite one being "He's ####ed."
Often, though, the movie feels like an illustrated lecture without the lecture. We witness all sorts of strange cultural and natural phenomena without having a clue as to their meanings. Why does the rain forest tribe have no defense system? What do the tattoos, headpieces and jewelry mean? Why are sacrificial victims painted blue? It's nice to know that there are few university professors who actually understand this movie.
What's really puzzling is that everyone seems to speak the same language, meaning that enough travel and trade exist so our remote village would certainly be aware of the barbarity of the capital city and its roving warriors. So why does everything that happens to them come as a surprise?
Gibson's crew is exemplary in creating this lost world. Cinematographer Dean Semler, shooting digitally with Panavision's new high-definition Genesis camera system, seemingly can get his graceful, fluid camera into just about any place in that rain forest, which he fills with dazzling light. Designer Tom Sanders' constructions convey us into a world of terrifying oddness and savagery. James Horner's score mingles weird, primordial notes with vague Latin sounds and even Sufi music by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
Variety and Hollywood Reporter's reviews are below. Could this be the surprise spoiler? Or - more than Mel's tirade and failure to designated a driver - could the overwhelming violence ruin its chances?
Apocalypto
By TODD MCCARTHY
Variety
Mel Gibson is always good for a surprise, and his latest is that "Apocalypto" is a remarkable film. Set in the waning days of the Mayan civilization, the picture provides a trip to a place one's never been before, offering hitherto unseen sights of exceptional vividness and power. In the wake of its director's recent outburst and unwanted publicity, commercial prospects remain anyone's guess, and those looking for a reason not to attend will undoubtedly find one, be it Gibson's tirade, the gore, the subtitles or outre subject matter. But blood-and-guts action audiences should eat this up, Gibson is courting Latinos, eco-political types will like the message and at least part of the massive "The Passion of the Christ" crowd should be curious, so strong biz is possible if these distinct constituencies are roused.
Despite the subject's inherent spectacle, conflict and societal interest, Central America's pre-Columbian history has scarcely been touched by filmmakers; Hollywood's only venture into the territory was the little-remembered 1963 quasi-epic "Kings of the Sun," with Yul Brynner and George Chakiris.
Cast largely with indigenous nonpros speaking the prevailing surviving dialect of the Mesoamericans, "Apocalypto" is exotic, wild, ferocious, teeming with startling incident and brutal violence.
With co-screenwriter Farhad Safinia, Gibson has cooked up a scenario that is fundamentally a survival and chase film, with a final act that trades on the human hunt motif of "The Most Dangerous Game" and Cornel Wilde's "The Naked Prey."
But both the grand conception of a civilization in decline and the extraordinary detail with which the society is presented make the picture much more than that, to the extent that it startlingly echoes another portent-laden year-end release, Alfonso Cuaron's "Children of Men;" one film is set in the past, the other in the near-future, one was made in Mexico by a Yank-Aussie, the other in Britain by a Mexican, but both are contemporaneously resonant stories of pursuit through poisoned, dangerous lands on the brink.
Starting at a run and seldom stopping for a breather, pic opens on an animal hunt that occasions a graphically gross two-prong practical joke that instantly humanizes the characters. It establishes the relaxed, intimate, sensual nature of family-oriented life in a small jungle settlement occupied by the fearsome-looking but free-spirited protags. Chief among them is Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), an athletic young man who has long flowing locks, sports tattoos, designed body scars, large ear adornments and a sort of chin plug, and wears nothing but a well-fitted loin cloth. His teeth are not quite as bad as those of his pals, which are very bad indeed.
Paradise comes to an abrupt end a half-hour in with the dawn attack of marauders who pillage with ruthless expertise. These guys are more heavily decorated than the locals, with bones through their noses and elsewhere. Two members of what the press notes identify as Holcane warriors stand out: the leader, Zero Wolf (the supremely imposing Raoul Trujillo), whose left arm and head are festooned with human and animal jaws, and the sadistic Snake Ink (Rodolfo Palacios, fantastically hateful), who, restrained from killing Jaguar Paw by Zero Wolf, instead murders the captive's father in front of him, launching an antagonism that runs through the picture. Both of these heavies could stay in costume and stride straight into another "Mad Max" film.
With his surviving fellow villagers, Jaguar Paw is bound and marched off through the jungle, but not before he's secreted his very pregnant wife Seven (Dalia Hernandez) and little son (Carlos Emilio Baez) in a deep pit, promising, rather against the odds, to return.
The greatest mystery surrounding the Mayan civilization is why it collapsed so suddenly. Gibson adroitly lines his film with hints of the numerous possible causes, including famine, disease, drought, increased warfare, a corrupt ruling class and general societal breakdown. A bedraggled group of emaciated natives is glimpsed moving through the forest early on, and the prisoners later pass by a haunted girl with "the sickness" who warns about the coming "blackness of day."
The long central section of "Apocalypto" is simply great epic cinema, with generous dollops of chilling horror and grisly human sacrifice. Production designer Tom Sanders makes a huge contribution to the captives' gradual entry into the great and chaotic Maya City. Each neighborhood is brilliantly detailed, from the derelict outlying shantytown to the industrial and more prosperous commercial districts, the slave market where the women are sold off and, finally, the staggering central plaza, where the first thing seen is a freshly detached human head being bounced down the long steps of a towering pyramid toward a frenzied crowd below.
Only then does it dawn on the shackled prisoners what's in store for them. At the summit preside dissolute royals as well as a high priest who, time and again, plunges a knife into a man's belly and, while the victim is still alive, tears out his still-beating heart as an offering to placate the gods to end the drought.
It takes a freakish act of nature to save Jaguar Paw, but he and the few other survivors are quickly made objects of sport in an arena, from which commences the long and eventful chase of Jaguar Paw by Zero Wolf and his minions back through the jungle. Double-whammy ending tips over into undue melodrama that some may find risible, and one aspect of the climax establishes the film's time frame as much later in Mayan history than one might have guessed.
Notwithstanding the fantastic sets, costumes, makeup, body and hair designs and natural locations, perhaps the greatest impression is made by the performers' faces, which are superbly photogenic and unlike any normally seen in movies. The attractive, agile Youngblood carries the film with room to spare, and is entirely convincing in his many dramatic moments as well as in the intense action. Casting director Carla Hool rates a huge bonus for tracking down the people who play everyone from the most savage looking warriors to the paralyzingly weird female aristocrats in the city.
One notable aspect of the characterizations is the general attitude toward death. The Mayans as portrayed here naturally fear it like anyone, but they accept it, just as they acknowledge physical pain as an everyday aspect of life. They are utterly without sentimentality, tears or remorse; when one is about to die, another will sincerely tell them, "Travel well," and that is that. Blood and violence is abundant, but doesn't feel exaggerated or out of line in relation to the material.
Production is a wonder. Dean Semler's camera moves relentlessly through the densest of foliage and over the roughest of terrain on locations near Veracruz and in the rainforests of Catemaco, with some additional shooting done in Costa Rica and the U.K.; Gibson clearly knew the impact the lenser of the second and third "Mad Max" films could deliver. More remarkable still is that pic was shot on the new high definition Genesis camera system. Without a doubt, "Apocalypto" is the best-looking big-budget film yet shot digitally; one can't tell it wasn't shot on film.
James Horner composed an uncharacteristically low-key and moody score, full of threatening, choral-like synthesizer growling, woodwind interludes and alarming percussive strikes.
---------------------------------------------------
Apocalypto
Kirk Honeycutt
Hollywood Reporter
It really began with his "Braveheart" more than a decade ago, though no one really noticed then because it obeyed all the conventions of a big Hollywood epic, albeit a very violent one. But Mel Gibson's career as a film director is becoming one long essay in human cruelty through the ages. Whatever spiritual messages devout Christians took from 2004's "The Passion of the Christ," its violence was pornographic.
In "Apocalypto," Gibson and co-writer Farhad Safinia turn to the Mayan civilization that dominated present-day Mexico and Central America from 2400 B.C. to the 15th century A.D. They ignore its advances in urban planning, mathematics, art, astronomy, agriculture and writing systems to dwell on its utter barbarity. Men hunt men, rape women and sacrifice victims by tearing hearts from quivering bodies with joyful ferocity.
This is no cheesy exploitation movie, though, but a first-rate epic build around one man's will to survive to rescue his family. In other words, in the good Hollywood tradition, it's got a hero, villain, damsel in distress, exotic natives and breathtaking vistas that evoke feelings of awe and dread. The guy knows how to make a heart-pounding movie; he just happens to be a cinematic sadist.
Gibson's well-publicized personal problems, the film's eye-catching key art and critics calling him a sadist probably add up to money in the bank for the Walt Disney Co. "Apocalypto" might not reach the $600 million worldwide grosses of "Passion," but it will attract a considerable international crowd. To his credit, there is never a dull moment.
The movie opens as the Mayan civilization is in its death throes, though no one knows it. We are in a tranquil rain forest where a small community of hunters and baby-makers live in ecological harmony with a nature that provides animals to slaughter and food to gather. Then the village is attacked by marauding mercenary warriors from the capital looking for sacrificial victims to assuage the gods for a drought and plague.
Men and a few women to be sold as slaves or concubines are brutally tied to long poles and marched through the rain forest to the Mayan city. There the men meet their fate atop a pyramid where they are painted blue, draped over an altar stone for an obsidian knife to plunge into the chest and rip out the heart with surgical skill, the heart going into a fire, the head chopped from the body and the corpse flung down the steps to the cackling glee of the assembled townsfolk. Do these guys know how to party or what?
The central figure is family man Jaguar Paw, played by Rudy Youngblood, an expressive and charismatic Native American with considerable athletic and thespian skills. All the actors are Native Americans, and the astute casting is arguably the best thing about this movie. Dalia Hernandez, a Mexican dancer and student, has a lovely face that catches the terror of Jaguar Paw's pregnant wife, who is left behind in the village well that first protects, then traps her and her child.
Canadian Jonathan Brewer plays comical sidekick Blunted, who is the butt of every joke. New Mexican actor Raoul Trujillo makes a sturdy foe as the warrior leader, Zero Wolf, who captures Jaguar Paw and his mates. His villainy is trumped by his sadistic underling Snake Ink -- don't you just love these Jacobean names? -- played by Mexican actor Rodolfo Palacios with zeal. And so it goes down to the smallest role, even a busybody mother-in-law instantly recognizable to many a suffering contemporary husband.
For the first 85 minutes, we along with the captives are dragged into a world of chaos and confusion on this frightening, arduous journey. The freshness of this world, nothing like it having appeared on film before, captures our imagination. Then, suddenly, thanks to divine intervention by solar eclipse, Jaguar Paw escapes his captors.
The movie turns into a much more conventional chase movie with Zero Wolf and his gang racing through the jungle to hunt down and kill Jaguar Paw. Yet the deeper the chase goes into the rain forest, the more the home court advantage swings to our hero. Soon we have a reverse "Deliverance," where the hillbilly is the good guy and every dreadful fate that befalls his pursuers gets cheers from the popcorn crowd.
Like "Passion," Gibson feels -- and he may be right here -- that ancient languages transport audiences into another time and place. The script has been translated into the Mayan dialect spoken in the Yucatan peninsula today. So the movie comes to us in subtitles, my favorite one being "He's ####ed."
Often, though, the movie feels like an illustrated lecture without the lecture. We witness all sorts of strange cultural and natural phenomena without having a clue as to their meanings. Why does the rain forest tribe have no defense system? What do the tattoos, headpieces and jewelry mean? Why are sacrificial victims painted blue? It's nice to know that there are few university professors who actually understand this movie.
What's really puzzling is that everyone seems to speak the same language, meaning that enough travel and trade exist so our remote village would certainly be aware of the barbarity of the capital city and its roving warriors. So why does everything that happens to them come as a surprise?
Gibson's crew is exemplary in creating this lost world. Cinematographer Dean Semler, shooting digitally with Panavision's new high-definition Genesis camera system, seemingly can get his graceful, fluid camera into just about any place in that rain forest, which he fills with dazzling light. Designer Tom Sanders' constructions convey us into a world of terrifying oddness and savagery. James Horner's score mingles weird, primordial notes with vague Latin sounds and even Sufi music by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
Win Butler
Ed Gonzalez in Slant Magazine:
** ½
Mel Gibson is sick, but his new film profits from his weakness. When he inserted a photo of himself into the trailer for Apocalypto, he wasn't just needling his critics—he was both prophesizing his anti-Semitic tirade in Los Angeles and the lunatic violence this film releases onto movies screens like some biblical flood. Tragically, Apocalypto will make more money in its opening weekend than The New World did in its entire domestic run: This is because Gibson sees the fall of the Mayan empire as a big action-movie thrill ride, replete with a jaguar pursuit that subs for a high-octane car chase and a vicious animal attack that could have been swiped from Jurassic Park. What makes these set pieces unique to Gibson is their perverse intensity, like a slip-slide-and-whack slaying which ends with a stream of blood gushing out of a man's head like water from a fountain (the closest the film comes to a bullet-time effect). Fanboys will lap it up, but what about the rest of the world?
When Gibson went batshit in Los Angeles, even his knee-jerk apologists could no longer ignore the anti-Semitism that informs The Passion of the Christ, just as the director's homophobia was crucial to his vile Braveheart. But his public apology inspired sympathy, maybe even forgiveness, because, for the first time, it felt as if Gibson was fessing up to something: that "deep rotting fear" that haunts the Mayans throughout Apocalypto. No less visionary but every bit as dubious as Passion of the Christ, the film is very much the work of a flawed individual—a big, hulking, passionately raw spectacle of doom and devastation that, at the very least, excitingly validates the quote by Will Durant that introduces the story: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." When Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) and his friends, during a hunting expedition, encounter another tribe, who speak of their land being ravaged and urge for a new beginning, it is evident that the end of an empire looms near, but it is not the Spanish that are coming (not yet, at least), but a master race of Mayans looking for human sacrifices.
Gibson views Jaguar Paw as a Christ-like figure, staging his kidnapped people's journey from their village to the Mayan stronghold not unlike Jesus's journey to the cross. Gibson has no interest in extolling the riches of the Mayan culture, only its vile decadence (to the director, this was a culture that deserved to be conquered), but while the film's contempt is stronger than its reverence, Gibson's rapt, almost juvenile attention span can be touching, as when he sets up the way Jaguar Paw and his friends punk the chubby Blunted (Jonathan Brewer), who is first tricked into eating the balls of a boar, then deceived into rubbing a red powder onto his #### as a means of finally impregnating his wife. When Blunted runs out of his tent, clutching his balls and landing in a trough of water (his wife follows suit, her mouth burning—get it?), it seems that Gibson only has stand-up comedy crowds in mind, but there's no doubt that he has researched the customs of these people.
On their way to the Mayan temple, Jaguar Paw is taunted by a cruel man who gives him the name Almost—because he almost escaped the raping and pillaging of their village, which left Jaguar Paw's son and pregnant wife at the bottom of a pit with no means of escape. On their journey, they will encounter a little girl who is shrouded in mystery (she hovers over a dead woman, ostensibly her mother, marks on both their bodies that may or may not have come from the white man) and who throws a fierce prophecy to the wind. It is as if she were warning of Christ's resurrection. Indeed, when Jaguar Paw escapes his captors, who hold court like Herod and celebrate the day like the people of Babel (dig the emperor's fat-little-piggy son, then take a whiff of that shot from the point-of-view of a decapitated head!), Gibson imagines Jaguar Paw not unlike he did Jesus in the last shot of Passion of the Christ: the original last-action hero.
But there is a difference between Christ and Jaguar Paw: Though he busts a move like a sick motha, Jaguar Paw doesn't so much itch for vengeance as he thrills for survival. Apocalypto finds something spiritual in dramatic juxtapositions of emotion. As Jaguar Paw, a lethal weapon of a man, returns to his village, his vigilance is contrasted with that of his wife, who struggles, on the brink of giving birth, in her stone pit against the forces of mother nature—killing an ape-like creature, ingeniously stitching up a wound on her son's leg with decapitated ant jaws, and trying to stay above water when it begins pouring. Like Passion of the Christ, Apocalypto is neither good nor healthy, but it's impassioned and visionary. When Gibson allows for scenes such as Blunted's mother-in-law, after she isn't sold into slavery by the Mayans, connecting emotionally for the first time with her son-in-law in the face of their hopeless spiritual depletion, the director recalls the great Mary-Jesus flashbacks from Passion of the Christ, offering us a glimpse of that heart he otherwise delights in ripping from people's chests.
** ½
Mel Gibson is sick, but his new film profits from his weakness. When he inserted a photo of himself into the trailer for Apocalypto, he wasn't just needling his critics—he was both prophesizing his anti-Semitic tirade in Los Angeles and the lunatic violence this film releases onto movies screens like some biblical flood. Tragically, Apocalypto will make more money in its opening weekend than The New World did in its entire domestic run: This is because Gibson sees the fall of the Mayan empire as a big action-movie thrill ride, replete with a jaguar pursuit that subs for a high-octane car chase and a vicious animal attack that could have been swiped from Jurassic Park. What makes these set pieces unique to Gibson is their perverse intensity, like a slip-slide-and-whack slaying which ends with a stream of blood gushing out of a man's head like water from a fountain (the closest the film comes to a bullet-time effect). Fanboys will lap it up, but what about the rest of the world?
When Gibson went batshit in Los Angeles, even his knee-jerk apologists could no longer ignore the anti-Semitism that informs The Passion of the Christ, just as the director's homophobia was crucial to his vile Braveheart. But his public apology inspired sympathy, maybe even forgiveness, because, for the first time, it felt as if Gibson was fessing up to something: that "deep rotting fear" that haunts the Mayans throughout Apocalypto. No less visionary but every bit as dubious as Passion of the Christ, the film is very much the work of a flawed individual—a big, hulking, passionately raw spectacle of doom and devastation that, at the very least, excitingly validates the quote by Will Durant that introduces the story: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." When Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) and his friends, during a hunting expedition, encounter another tribe, who speak of their land being ravaged and urge for a new beginning, it is evident that the end of an empire looms near, but it is not the Spanish that are coming (not yet, at least), but a master race of Mayans looking for human sacrifices.
Gibson views Jaguar Paw as a Christ-like figure, staging his kidnapped people's journey from their village to the Mayan stronghold not unlike Jesus's journey to the cross. Gibson has no interest in extolling the riches of the Mayan culture, only its vile decadence (to the director, this was a culture that deserved to be conquered), but while the film's contempt is stronger than its reverence, Gibson's rapt, almost juvenile attention span can be touching, as when he sets up the way Jaguar Paw and his friends punk the chubby Blunted (Jonathan Brewer), who is first tricked into eating the balls of a boar, then deceived into rubbing a red powder onto his #### as a means of finally impregnating his wife. When Blunted runs out of his tent, clutching his balls and landing in a trough of water (his wife follows suit, her mouth burning—get it?), it seems that Gibson only has stand-up comedy crowds in mind, but there's no doubt that he has researched the customs of these people.
On their way to the Mayan temple, Jaguar Paw is taunted by a cruel man who gives him the name Almost—because he almost escaped the raping and pillaging of their village, which left Jaguar Paw's son and pregnant wife at the bottom of a pit with no means of escape. On their journey, they will encounter a little girl who is shrouded in mystery (she hovers over a dead woman, ostensibly her mother, marks on both their bodies that may or may not have come from the white man) and who throws a fierce prophecy to the wind. It is as if she were warning of Christ's resurrection. Indeed, when Jaguar Paw escapes his captors, who hold court like Herod and celebrate the day like the people of Babel (dig the emperor's fat-little-piggy son, then take a whiff of that shot from the point-of-view of a decapitated head!), Gibson imagines Jaguar Paw not unlike he did Jesus in the last shot of Passion of the Christ: the original last-action hero.
But there is a difference between Christ and Jaguar Paw: Though he busts a move like a sick motha, Jaguar Paw doesn't so much itch for vengeance as he thrills for survival. Apocalypto finds something spiritual in dramatic juxtapositions of emotion. As Jaguar Paw, a lethal weapon of a man, returns to his village, his vigilance is contrasted with that of his wife, who struggles, on the brink of giving birth, in her stone pit against the forces of mother nature—killing an ape-like creature, ingeniously stitching up a wound on her son's leg with decapitated ant jaws, and trying to stay above water when it begins pouring. Like Passion of the Christ, Apocalypto is neither good nor healthy, but it's impassioned and visionary. When Gibson allows for scenes such as Blunted's mother-in-law, after she isn't sold into slavery by the Mayans, connecting emotionally for the first time with her son-in-law in the face of their hopeless spiritual depletion, the director recalls the great Mary-Jesus flashbacks from Passion of the Christ, offering us a glimpse of that heart he otherwise delights in ripping from people's chests.
Here's what one blogger, who attended a free screening, had to say:
In Which the Heavens Reveal...
...against every possible ####ing odd that you might ever have imagined, that M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water will now close 2006 as only the SECOND most psychotically arrogant, most queasily self-obsessed, most psychically misdirected, and absolute batshit craziest movie of the year. Apocalypto would be monumentally funny, and a boon to drinking-game concocters everywhere, if it weren't so truly horrifying to ponder the cultural factors and the individual mental corruption that have allowed it to exist. Even when the film wants you to laugh—and if you've never heard the ancient Mayan phrase for "He's ####ed," you have now—the laughter sticks in your throat, clogged, I hope, by your disgust. The movie finally earns its premonitions of apocalypse, but more for what it is than for anything it shows or says. F
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Not that I give Roger Friedman's reviews any mind, but Fox News giving Apocalypto an awful review is worth a chuckle.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,233518,00.html
And Oscar Guy, if you find Braveheart unwatchable because of the graphic violence, better stay away from this one. Jeez!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,233518,00.html
And Oscar Guy, if you find Braveheart unwatchable because of the graphic violence, better stay away from this one. Jeez!
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
Win Butler