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Apocalypto is a 2006 film directed by Mel Gibson. Set in the Yucatán Peninsula before Spanish contact, it depicts a fictitious view of the decline of the Maya civilization. The film was released on December 8, 2006, and is rated R in the U.S. (18 in the U.K) for sequences of graphic violence and disturbing images. The film has received some positive reviews from film critics,[1][2] but has also been criticised by a number of anthropologists and archaeologists working in the field of Mayanist studies for its depiction of ancient Maya society as little more than unsophisticated "brutal savages", as well as for its evident anachronisms and other historical inaccuracies.[3][4]
Background
Mel Gibson filmed Apocalypto mainly in Catemaco and Paso de Ovejas in the Mexican state of Veracruz. Gibson uses the Yukatek Maya language[5] in Apocalypto, in the same way he used Aramaic and Latin for his religious blockbuster The Passion of the Christ. Apocalypto features a cast of unknown actors from Mexico City, the Yucatán, some Native Americans from the United States and Canada, and locals from Los Tuxtlas and Veracruz.
While Gibson is financing the film himself, Disney has signed on to release Apocalypto for a fee in certain markets. The film was slated for an August 4, 2006 release, but Touchstone Pictures delayed the release date to December 8, 2006 due to heavy rains interfering with filming in Mexico. On September 23, 2006, Gibson pre-screened Apocalypto to two predominantly Native American audiences in the US state of Oklahoma, at the Riverwind Casino in Goldsby, owned by the Chickasaw Nation, and at Cameron University in Lawton.[6] He also did a pre-screening in Austin, Texas on September 24 in conjunction with one of the movie's stars, Rudy Youngblood.[7]
[edit] Themes
[edit] Political subtext
The movie is partially intended as a political allegory about civilizations in decline. Said Gibson in September of 2006: "The precursors to a civilization that’s going under are the same, time and time again... What’s human sacrifice if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?"[8]
[edit] Plot
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Opening quote: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." -- W. Durant
In a Mesoamerican jungle, a tapir flees through the jungle for its life, pursued by a small band of Native Americans. Suddenly the tapir is impaled against a wooden trap. The protagonist, Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), is out hunting with his father, Flint Sky, and other men from their village. As they divide the dead tapir, they encounter a train of traumatized refugees on the fleeing from something which has "ravaged" their land. In exchange for a gift of fish, Flint Sky allows them to pass through tribal lands, but restrains his son from asking questions, telling him later that fear is a disease which must not infect their village. The movie follows the hunters as they return to home with their catch, establishes some of the personal relationships there and introduces Jaguar Paw's pregnant wife, Seven, and son, Turtles Run.
The next morning, Jaguar Paw is awakened by a dream, in which he sees one of the refugee leaders from earlier with his heart literally sliced out of his body. The apparition pleads with him to flee for his life. As a Maya war party mercilessly assaults the village in a dawn raid, Jaguar Paw discreetly slips away with his wife and son. He is able to lower his wife and son into a small cave (presumably a chultun, shaped something like a well)[9] to hide them. Seven and Turtle Run beg him not to leave them alone, but Jaguar Paw refuses to leave the other villagers defenceless.
Jaguar Paw heroically battles with the attackers, but is soon subdued. One of the raiders, whom he had earlier wounded, attempts to execute him on the spot, but is prevented by the party's leader, Zero Wolf, who states that he is needed alive. Realizing that Flint Sky is Jaguar Paw's father, the raider lifts the old hunter to his feet and holds a stone knife to his throat. Knowing that he is about to die, Flint Sky looks Jaguar Paw right in the eyes and emparts some final advice. "My son," he says, "you must not be afraid." The raider slices Flint Sky's throat from ear to ear before the horrified eyes of his son. The raider then leans next to Jaguar Paw's ear and hisses that henceforth he will be known as "Almost." The surviving adults of the village are tied together and led on a forced march into the rain forest. Seven and Turtles Run remain, hiding in the cave, but one of the raiders cuts the vine that was hanging down as their means of escape.
The movie occasionally shows the pair in the cave, with scenes of attempted escapes and a display of the known Aztec practice of using ant mandibles to suture wounds (Turtles Run's leg). Seven is able to throw up a rock with a vine over the edge. Her attempt is unsuccessful, and because of her fall back into the cave, she goes into labor.
The captive villagers are taken on a long trek toward the Maya city of Culiacan, where they encounter the previously met refugees as prisoners, failing maize crops, poverty, and slaves producing plaster and building edifices. They also encounter a small girl with smallpox, whom the Maya shun, but she prophesies doom will follow the darkness of the sun in day and the man who runs with jaguars and who will be reborn of mud. In the city, the female captives are sold as slaves, while the men are painted blue and taken to the top of a step pyramid to have their hearts removed, be decapitated, and have their headless bodies thrown down the front steps of the pyramid.
http://www.rotten.com/library/death/human-sacrifice/]
One by one, the captive men are lead to the altar of the pyramid to have their hearts cut out as the others stand, waiting their turn. As Jaguar Paw's turn comes, a friend from his village wishes him a happy journey into the Afterlife. Jaguar Paw, thinking of the family he left behind, despondently declares, "I cannot go, not now." But as the high priest raises the sacricial knife to disembowel him, the people of the city are horrified by a solar eclipse. The priest loudly prays for the light to return and, when his prayers are answered, he declares that the sun god Kukulkan has drank his fill of blood. He orders Zero Wolf to "dispose" of the remaining captives.
The captives, still tied, are taken to an open space by their captors and are allowed to run for their freedom in pairs while the Zero Wolf and his raiders attack them with javelins, arrows, and rocks. Cut Rock, the beloved son of Zero Wolf, waits at the end with a stone axe to finish off anyone who survives the gauntlet, acting as a 'finisher'.
Jaguar Paw is able to reach the end, despite being shot in the back with an arrow by Zero Wolf, and when a friend gives his life to buy him some time, he is able to pull out the arrowhead and drive it into Cut Rock's throat. The young Maya warrior bleeds to death in his father's arms as Jaguar Paw flees towards the safety of the jungle. Zero Wolf, utterly enraged by the killing of his son, vows to hunt Jaguar Paw to the ends of the earth and flay him alive. Meanwhile, Jaguar Paw disappears into the jungle while Zero Wolf, flanked by his fellow slave catchers, follows in hot pursuit.
Bleeding from his arrow wound, Jaguar Paw hides in the top of a tree, only to come between a jaguar and her cub. The jaguar chases him, but when one of his pursuers steps between them to capture the running Jaguar Paw, the jaguar kills the pursuer instead. Some of the members of the warband are noticeably distraught as the eclipse and man running with the jaguar were part of the prophecy from the small girl with smallpox, yet they continue pursuit.
Jaguar Paw seems to recover from his wound, and leads them on a chase throughout the night. The next morning, just as the pursuers are closing in, he comes to the top of a giant waterfall and, after making a quick decision, leaps over.
Zero Wolf, believing him dead, mockingly declares that the prophecy has not been fulfilled. Then he sees Jaguar Paw swim to the shore of the river. Jaguar Paw looks up at them, crying out that they have entered the hunting grounds of his ancestors, "I am Jaguar Paw and this is my forest! I am Jaguar Paw and I am a hunter!"
Enraged, Zero Wolf orders his men to go over the waterfall as well. When one of them suggests that they climb around it, Zero Wolf stabs him to death on the spot. One by one, the others leap over the top, killing two more of them. They continue to track Jaguar Paw as he flees ever closer to his village.
In further fulfillment of the girl's prophecy, Jaguar begins to actively fight back against his pursuers after clawing his way to dry land after falling into a mud pit. First, he disperses them by throwing a hornet's nest in their midst, then he captures a poisonous frog to envenom blowgun darts. After killing a straggler with three of these darts, he finally confronts his father's murderer as the two men battle with stone axes. After being repeatedly bludgeoned in the face, the raider is left defenceless. "Almost," he says admiringly before Jaguar Paw finishes him off.
It begins to rain and the cave with Seven and Turtles Run begins to fill with water, and they are soon threatened with drowning. Seven climbs onto a rock and holds her son up as the rain accumulates around them. She gives birth underwater while balancing her son on her shoulders.
Jaguar Paw continues to elude his pursuers into his village. But then, he is shot again by another arrow from Zero Wolf. As Zero Wolf closes in to slowly torture him to death, he is impaled on a wooden tapir trap. Burning with hatred, Zero Wolf endevours to use his waning strength to stab his son's killer. But then, the stone knife falls from his hand.
As the two survivors chase the wounded and exhausted Jaguar Paw to the seaside, he is spared by the arrival of Spanish Caravels with conquistadors coming ashore in small rowboats. As the slave traders walk towards the new arrivals in amazement, Jaguar Paw flees back to the cave, barely in time to rescue his family.
Later, as Jaguar Paw, Seven, Turtles Run and the new baby pass overlooking the Spanish ships. Seven asks him what they are and is told that they carry men. She then asks her husband whether they should go to meet them. "We must go to the jungle," he declares, "and start anew."
Spoilers end here.
[edit] Critical reception
Apocalypto was given "two big thumbs up" by Richard Roeper and guest critic Aisha Tyler on Ebert & Roeper at the movies.[2]
The movie has received positive reviews in The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker and the Washington Post; it was panned by Newsweek, The Village Voice and the Chicago Tribune.
[edit] Historical inaccuracies
The film has, however, been accused of historical inaccuracy, racism and colonialism by some historians, Native Americans, and many in the archaeological community.[3] The film has been accused of fueling a stereotype of native Mesoamericans as bloodthirsty savages with few civilized achievements other than some architecture.[3]
Also, two domesticated dogs appear in the film, which is an anachronism.
[edit] Mesoamerican history
The inaccuracies begin with the opening credits, which are shown against a backdrop of artwork imitating the style of Maya murals, but prominently figuring a decapitation - something never shown in Maya mural art. On a very basic level, the movie contains a number of items unknown in precolumbian Mesoamerica, such as metal javelin blades. The Maya city inaccurately combines details from different Maya and Mesoamerican cultures widely separated by time and place.[4] For example, temples are in the shape of those of Tikal in the central lowlands classic style while decorated with Puuc style elements of the north west Yucatan centuries later. The mural in the arched walkway includes elements from the Maya codices combined with elements from the Bonampak murals (over 700 years older than the film's setting) and the San Bartolo murals (some 1500 years older than the film's setting)-- as in most civilizations, the styles of Maya art changed dramatically over the centuries. Elements of such non-Maya civilizations as those of Teotihuacan and the Aztec are also seen.
Robert Carmack, an anthropology professor from SUNY Albany's renowned Mesoamerican program said "It's a big mistake - almost a tragedy - that they present this as a Maya film."[4] His colleague, Walter Little, agreed: "A lot of people will think this is how it was, unfortunately."[4] Edgar Martin del Campo, also of SUNY Albany, has pointed out additional flaws. He says, for example, that the Mayans had an understanding of astronomy and would not have been in awe of an eclipse as they are depicted in the movie.[4] In fact, this exact plot device was recognized as an inaccurate cliche as early as 1952 by Guatemalan author Augusto Monterroso, who used an ironic reversal of this plot in his story The Eclipse, in which a friar who tries to use this gambit is sacrificed as the priest calmly reads "one by one, the unending dates in which there would be solar and lunar eclipses, which the Maya astronomers had predicted and noted in their codices without the invaluable help of Aristotle." It is possible within the context of the movie, however, that the Maya elite were certainly aware of the coming eclipse, and in fact had staged the spectacle - most attested to by the sacrificing priest's call for the god to show his pleasure by revealing his light precisely when the sun is again revealed. Also, there is little possibility that the Maya would have been "dumbstruck" by the sight of a city.[4] As an agricultural people, they also would not have allowed fields of rotting corpses near their crops.[4] Zachary Hruby, of UC Riverside, lamented the use of the Yucatec Maya language, as it gives a sense of authenticity to a film that he says has taken many unfortunate liberties with the subject. Specifically these liberties include: the style and scale of the sacrifices, the presentation of the Maya villagers as isolated people living off the wild forest, the chronological compression of the more urbanized Terminal Classic Maya and the primarily village-dwelling Late Postclassic Maya.[10]
Trivia
Mel Gibson's cameo in the teaser trailerWorking titles for this film include Destructo and Armaggedo [1]
The title Apocalypto is a Greek verb (αποκαλύπτω) meaning "I reveal" [11]. The word "Apocalypse," Greek "Αποκάλυψις," which means "Revelation," is derived from this Greek verb, but the movie is not overtly religiously themed or connected to the biblical Apocalypse.
Although Mel Gibson does not star in the film, he does have a one-frame cameo (pictured to the right) about 1 minutes, 46 seconds or about 2/3 into the first teaser trailer. His appearance is just before the screaming monkey is shown. [2] [3]
A crucial scene of the film is reminiscent of an episode of in Columbus's fourth voyage. This scene has become something of a cliche, appearing for instance in a short story by Augusto Monterroso and also in an episode of The Adventures of Tintin called Prisoners of the Sun, also adapted to the screen under the name Tintin and the Temple of the Sun. (As noted above, Monterroso refutes the cliche, pointing out that the Maya had advanced astronomy and would not have been frightened by an eclipse).[4]
A solar eclipse in a key scene is followed by a full moon on what appears to be the evening of the same day, an astronomical impossibility: solar eclipses only occur during the new moon.
The leader of the warband Zero Wolf yells "I am walking here!" when a tree almost falls on his group who are making their way to the Temple. This is a parody of Dustin Hoffman's famous line in Midnight Cowboy.
The film opens with a quotation from historian Will Durant.
Like Gibson's previous film, The Passion of the Christ the movie has no opening credits, and begins with a quote. The title is only seen during the end credits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ApocalyptoApocalypto: The Most Powerful Film Of All Time
Gibson's masterpiece an allegorical warning against unrestrained tyranny of government, human sacrifice and enslavement
Alex Jones & Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, December 11, 2006
Mel Gibson's Apocalypto is the most powerful film of all time, it is packed with strong positive messages and sets the standard as the most polished, iconic and awe-inspiring allegorical warning against the unrestrained power and abuse of government that cinema has ever seen.
Set in Mesoamerica just before Spanish contact, the film illustrates the decline of the Maya civilization. The plot revolves around brutal Aztec warrior armies being sent on missions to capture and enslave neighboring tribes and bring them back to be used as fodder for human sacrifice and slavery.
Gibson again sets the tyrannical power of the state against the family and the rag-tag bands, it's what we witnessed in The Patriot and Braveheart but the message is driven home even more authoritatively in Apocalypto. In almost every case throughout history, in a declining empire the state assumes the role of a brutal, murdering and oppressive juggernaut, out to dominate and enslave the people. Apocalypto takes one example from history and uses it to underscore this universal truth.
The film details the horrors of unrestrained government and how tyrants always seize the reigns of control, press on the nerve of power and abuse, dominate and terrorize populations.
Apocalypto highlights the process of targeting the leading warriors of the enemy tribe, the tallest, toughest, meanest, would be the prime candidates for sacrifice and torture. This was done in an attempt to please the gods with the most coveted sacrifice and is the reason why indigenous populations in the region today are little over 5 foot tall on average.
Human sacrifice is a fundamental tenet of all historical dictatorships. It was practiced in ancient Germany, Greece, Asia and across the planet. The Mayans saw it as a normal function of society and would consider anyone who dissented as insane. Just as today, the police state, the surveillance state, torture and numerous other bizarre and abusive actions of the state are being normalized. History has taught us that cultures in terminal decline always resort to human sacrifice as they degenerate into the abyss of depravity and degradation and Apocalypto brings that message to the fore.
A telling moment in the film serves as commentary for the foreknowledge and exploitation of astronomical occurrences throughout history, where elite guilds versed in the secret wisdom of astronomy would anticipate solar and lunar eclipses and use them to hoodwink their populations into believing they held divine power, thus enlisting their enslavement and obedience under the threat that sun and moon would not return unless the people displayed total submission.
Parallels can be drawn to modern times where a population paranoid, fearful and uneducated can be brought to heel by manufactured monsters and imagined foreboding disasters in the name of the war on terror.
The film also illustrates how elites throughout history push bread and circuses, sporting and gladiatorial events, to distract the public from real issues and create false heroes to dislodge the natural mooring of man's moral compass and create a vacuum of good examples of how humans should function in a free society.
The Britney Spears of yesteryear, the adulated ones with their robes, bobbles and trinkets are exalted above all others and worshipped as gods on earth, as they take front row seats for macabre feasts of human blood-letting as institutionalized degradation sets in. The Mayans were simply echoing the more stylized Roman gladiatorial spectacles that preceded them. At first, the emperor's guards would simply torture and kill the prisoners but as the culture declined further, women and children were then fed to the lions in the name of entertainment.
Apocalypto communicates many positive aspects that give comfort to the soul, including the message of rejecting fear as a sickness, again alluding to today's society where fear is used as a method of brainwashing and control by the state.
Watching the film evokes a total immersion in the atmosphere of the experience. You are able to suspend disbelief and really imagine you are there in Mesoamerica. You feel the ancestral memories of the elders around the camp fire, it stirs the instinctive echoes of time that we as humanity all share.
There are very few films that have the impact of leaving you uplifted and enlightened as you leave the cinema, and for those impressions to stick. Apocalypto achieves this and teaches a philosophy of perseverance and courage that maintains an indelible mark on the viewer.
Mel Gibson is already being subjected to ridiculous hit pieces which attack him for depicting the real nature of the brutal Mayan culture.
An Austin-American Statesman article written by Chris Garcia features an interview with assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas, Julia Guernsey.
The arguments used to bash Apocalypto are nitpicking jabs at minutia which are then exploited to demonize the message of the entire film, such as claimed minor inaccuracies in cave drawings and outright false assertions such as the notion that women were not involved in the sacrificial rituals.
The sacrifices themselves are not denied and in fact are exalted as nothing more than a cultural tendency. Guernsey even has the temerity at one point to spew that human sacrifice and sacrifice of babies was a "pious act" done "with solemnity." Guernsey recoils and sneers at the very notion that human sacrifice should be condemned.
Slamming a precise portrayal of Mayan culture as offensive and racist is to be expected from moral relativists who are completely absent any factual evidence to counter Gibson's depiction. The Nazi culture was barbarous, genocidal and a disgrace to humanity - is it racist towards German people to suggest this was the case?
Bounding babies and small children every morning and sacrificing them to the water gods and the fertility gods is wrong. It was wrong then and it would be wrong now.
Cutting someone's heart out at sunrise and sunset is wrong. It is not racist or offensive to judge a culture if it is clearly distasteful. It is not unacceptable to discern what is right according to our innate moral compass. In fact, any attempt at removing the boundaries and definition of evil is simply evil itself trying to erase our frame of reference to characterize it.
In addition, Gibson could have gone even further in revealing the true nature of the Mayan culture if he had so wished. Cannibalism and the ritual sacrifice of children are two horrors that we now know took place in Mesoamerica but are left out of the film.
It is wholly unsurprising to see negative early reaction from elements of the radical environmentalist fringe in defense of ritual sacrifice and slaughter. These individuals share the same mindset as people like Dr. Erik Pianka, who earlier this year advocated the release of ebola and other deadly diseases to wipe out the majority of the human population, and the wider UN driven movement to control population growth by means of mass genocide.
Mel Gibson is Stanley Kubrick on steroids and Apocalypto elevates him to the position of the greatest living director in the world today. He is the standard of casting, cinematography and research. Apocalypto is avant garde, state of the art and evergreen at every step of the way.
The world is not a safe place and history shows that the most dangerous force is always government and the crime syndicates that grow up around it. The same high priesthood that manipulated and controlled the Mayan tribes of thousands of years ago were beholden to the same statecraft of tyranny that is embraced by our rulers today. Apocalypto is the very definition of this message and its power obtains it the accolade of the most important film of our generation - and possibly of all time.
This post has been edited by Torvalds on 18 Dec 2006, 16:54
მიმაგრებული სურათი
აპოკალიფტო / Apocalypto, მელ გიბსონის ახალი ფილმი
