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Apocalypto Review

Apocalypto Review

By Nouman ul haqPublished 2 years ago 7 min read
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Apocalypto Review

Mel Gibson is a really unclassifiable guy. Born in New York, he lived a good part of his childhood and youth in Australia and later became an Irish national, being also the sixth son of a very large family of eleven siblings whose father emigrated to Oceania to prevent his older offspring from being recruited for the War of the Vietnam. Likewise, being a fervent Catholic with a fundamentalist streak, as he has stated several times, he had no problem marrying an Anglican woman and proved it by having eight children with her, although in the end they ended up divorcing her.

To round out the confusing cake, he is usually ascribed to being close to the Republican Party but, paradoxically, not only has he never explicitly publicly supported that tendency, but he also expressed his sympathy for Michael Moore -who was about to produce his film Fahrenheit 9/ 11 and criticized the Iraq War, comparing Bush and his team to the oppressive Mayans of Apocalypto . And we get down to business.

Gibson became famous heading the bill for Mad Max , an Australian B-series that opened the doors of Hollywood for him, not only to make two appreciable sequels but also to carve out a triumphant career as a star, with a veritable string of hits; some were very commercial in tone , such as Lethal Weapon, Maverick or The Patriot , while others had greater qualitative aspirations -fulfilled or not-, such as The Year We Live Dangerously, Hamlet, Tequila Connection, The Faceless Man ... Precisely the latter constituted his directorial debut, work in which he was very well received, and that allowed him to become an acclaimed filmmaker who successively signed Braveheart, The Passion of the Christ , the aforementioned Apocalypto and, recently, Until the last man .

They have in common that they are great shows , made with considerable budgets and skilfully combining competent production with scripts that are not too deep but shrewdly written, dosing small drops of quality with others popular enough to please the public massively. The Passion and Apocalypto share an extra characteristic that gave them a special singularity: having been shot in the presumed original languages .in which the historical action would take place (Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic the first, one of the multiple Mayan dialects the second). Interestingly, they also share a feeling of repudiation by certain groups, dissatisfied with the image given to the Jews and the Mayans, respectively.

Apocalypto Review

The first thing that should be said about it is that Gibson himself declared that this film, Apocalypto (2006), had no historicist claim . He was interested in the idea of ​​indigenous people being broken from their peaceful hunter-gatherer existence only to be engulfed in a maelstrom of horror , as well as the fact that the aggressors, in turn, were also taking their last steps as a civilization. As such, the Maya had already become extinct at the beginning of the 16th century, since the year in which the action takes place could very well be 1502 and the Spaniards who appear at the end, the men of Columbus on his fourth voyage; In this last adventure, the Admiral reached the coasts of present-day Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama.

The Mayan civilization was not a flower of a day. Its chronological periodization begins in the Archaic period (9th century BC), goes through a Preclassic that reaches the middle of the III AD, reaches its apogee in the Classic (until the XIII AD) and ends in an epilogue of the Postclassic called Terminal or Contact. , which is the context of the movie. By then there were still Mayans but their cities were already covered with vegetation and partially forgotten since the end of the Classic (collapsed due to a combination of natural, economic, social and political factors), even though some still maintained a certain splendor, such as Tulum.

Apocalypto Review

Let us remember that it was not strictly an empire but rather something analogous to Ancient Greece, with a vast and varied region controlled by city-states , connected by a dense network of roads but in an eternal rivalry that was reflected in continuous wars. The latter is important because it breaks the traditional and crudely stereotyped idyllic image of the Mayan people as exclusively cultured, peaceful and united; the paradox is that this is what has been criticized, showing only the bad side, when Gibson and his screenwriter, Farhad Safinia (who was also a co-producer) precisely intended to highlight the contrast between the high cultural level of that civilization and their brutal customs, that is why they opted for the Mayans instead of the Mexicas.

The virulent reactions against the film therefore focused on the recreation of human sacrifice , which some continue to stubbornly deny despite the fact that the archaeological record has already proven its existence. It is true that the Mayans did not carry out mass holocausts almost in series, like the Mexicas, nor was the opening of the chest of the victims to extract their hearts the same throughout the territory (in the north of the Yucatan sacrifices were just as common). by drowning in cenotes).

However, a couple of observations should be made in this regard. The first, that in its last stage the Mayan civilization received a strong influence from the Toltec . This, coming from the Mexican highlands and culturally different (it was Nahuatl-speaking, like the Aztecs, who considered themselves its heirs) expanded to the south and dominated part of the Yucatan peninsula, Mayan territory, making some of its most representative cities such as Chichén Itzá or Mayapán changed a lot and adopted part of their customs, among them the worship of Kukulkan (the Toltec Quetzalcoátl) shown in the film.

The second, that, consequently, the human sacrifices and the war policy intensified . And if, as some experts think, the city reflected in Apocalypto coincides with what could have been Chichén Itzá (others, due to the chosen pyramid, lean towards Tikal, located north of Guatemala but also under that orbit of Toltec influence), the brutal argument would not be so distorted either.

Apocalypto Review

Only some details would squeak, such as the improbability of those hunting parties for victims and slaves (normally that was done in interurban wars), the fear of eclipses (it is true that the people were afraid of them but the priests were not taken for granted). surprise, since they had tables to predict them), the chronological decontextualization (which fuses situations and aesthetic elements separated by hundreds of years, such as the existence of post-classical civilization in the city and the arrival of the Spaniards), the sinister attire of the chief of the slavers (no painting reflects this) or the apparent ignorance of agricultureof the protagonist tribe living so close. Of course, the advice was provided by a specialist, archaeologist Richard Hansen (who admitted that some historical licenses had been allowed).

However, Apocalypto is above all a vibrant adventure film that tells the dramatic experience of Jaguar Paw, an Indian who sees his peaceful life cut short to discover the horror of civilization. In fact, Gibson and Safinia wanted to make a chase film devoid of technical paraphernalia in which the pursued had to run for his life. Said individual is played by Rudy Youngblood , an American actor who, as can be deduced from his name, is not of Mayan descent but Comanche and Yaqui (although his name is actually Rudy Nathaniel Jamal González) and had to learn the language for the film. In the rest of the cast, Mexicans predominate because, after all,Apocalypto was shot in Mexico, in the state of Veracruz , except for some shots taken in El Petén (Guatemala).

Apocalypto Review

Jaguar Claw's agonized flight ends on a beach, under a heavy downpour, watching in amazement the arrival of a boat with bearded men. Gibson wanted to reduce the oppressive tone of the story with an optimistic ending and it occurred to him to reinforce the salvation of the protagonist and his family by emphasizing the imminent end of a decadent civilization to make way for a new stage, the law of life of all civilizations, according to said. Of course, that also felt bad in some sectors, just as the problems grew when the Mexican filmmaker Juan Mora Catlett sued him for considering that Apocalypto looked suspiciously like his movie From him Return to Aztlán. Gibson, used to resisting blows, did not care; In addition to the predominantly positive reviews and awards received, his film grossed more than one hundred and twenty million dollars and that cushions any disappointment.

Apocalypto Review

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Nouman ul haq

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