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16th
January, 2007
DAVID ADAMS
Apocalypto (MA15+)
In
a word: Visceral
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FATHER
AND SON: Jaguar Paw, played by Rudy Youngblood, with
his father, played by Morris Bird. PICTURE: Andrew
Cooper, SMPSP © Icon Distribution, Inc.,
All rights reserved
"Gut-wrenching though it may be, at its heart
Apocalypto is an everyman story - one man’s
struggle to survive and his desire for him and his
family to live out a peaceful existence in a life
they know. At that level at least, it’s a story
we can all relate to."
|
Yes, it is brutal
in the vein of Braveheart and even of the Passion
of the Christ, and yes, as director Mel Gibson himself
has said, it’s not for the faint of heart.
While it’s set against the decline of the ancient Mayan
Empire in Central and South America around 500 years ago,
this is not a sweeping epic. Apocalypto is a movie
on a micro-scale, essentially the action-based story of one
man, Jaguar Paw (played by Rudy Youngblood), and his fight
to keep his family - and the life he knows - alive.
A hunter living in a jungle tribe, Jaguar Paw is captured
by raiders from the Mayan Empire - led by the horrid Zero
Wolf (played by Raoul Trujillo) and taken to their city where
his fate is to be sacrificed to the empire’s insatiable
appetite for blood. Yet there is a ‘miraculous’
intervention and Jaguar Paw escapes death and, pursued by
the warriors of the empire, races home to save his wife and
son.
Apocalypto offers tantalising glimpses of broader
themes - not only does it begin with a quote from Will Durant,
author of The Story of Civilisation: “A great
civilisation is not conquered from without until it has destroyed
itself from within”, and we are given some limited insights
into the dark themes which Gibson portrays as tearing at the
Mayan culture: decadence and lust; disease, starvation and
slavery; environmental degradation.
While this movie can be read as a commentary not only on Mayan
society and great empires of the past but on our society today,
it features a deliberately limited story: the latter part
of the film becomes little more than an extended - and relentless
- chase scene as Jaguar Paw makes his way home.
Much has been made of the movie’s violence, yet it is,
at least, violence in a context that, whether you agree with
Gibson’s interpretation or not (he co-wrote the film
as well as directed it), did exist. Our removal - in the supermarket-catered
West at least - from the day-to-day of having to prepare our
own food and, yes, bury our own dead, means that even scenes
in which an animal is killed for meat can churn our stomachs.
But there is no doubt that Mayan society was a violent one
and it’s that violence that, whether he has gone too
far or not, Gibson has tried to capture.
The violence aside - and just as in The Passion of the
Christ and Braveheart, there is a good deal
of it - Apocalypto is a beautifully shot film (thanks
there to Australia’s Dean Semmler) and features a haunting
soundtrack.
And just as with The Passion of the Christ, Apocalypto
is entirely subtitled - in this case, the actors speak
the little known language of Yucatec Maya. Both that and the
casting - Gibson has wisely chosen to forgo bringing in a
big name for the leads but instead cast mainly indigenous
actors - serve to give the movie a feel of authenticity (even
if the plot at times stretches this!)
Gut-wrenching though it may be, at its heart Apocalypto
is an everyman story - one man’s struggle to survive
and his desire for him and his family to live out a peaceful
existence in a life they know. At that level at least, it’s
a story we can all relate to. |
