Mel Gibson Is Responsible for All the Wars in the World (Movie review)

[icymist]

No apologies here from me, Mel deserves this type of treatment.... icy

OK, slight exaggeration. But he's at least to blame for this one.
By J. Hoberman
Apocalypto has a faux Greek title and an opening quote from historian Will Durant that ruminates on the decline of imperial Rome. It may seem an odd way to comment on the supposed end of an imaginary, unspeakably barbaric Mayan civilization—but WWJD? Mel Gibson means to be universal.

Not just a walk in the park with Mel and the guys (in this case a large cast of mainly Mexican Indians speaking present-day Yucatec), this lavishly punishing picture is the third panel in Gibson's Ordeal triptych. The Martyrdom of the Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ have nothing on The Misadventures of the Jaguar Paw, junior citizen of a generally jovial, practical-joke-loving 16th-century Central American social unit. Given the absence of any identification, and with regard to their good looks and family values (that is, keeping pet monkeys and having babies), these noble savages might be called the Sugar Tit tribe.

Over the course of Apocalypto's 140 subtitled minutes, Jaguar Paw (American actor Rudy Youngblood) endures two calvaries. After the Sugar Tit village is overrun, sacked, and more or less crucified by a marauding group of "civilized" Mayans, JP is dragged through the jungle, carrying his cross (as well as his brothers) to the Temple of Doom. After he's saved from ritual sacrifice by a timely miracle—his Mayan captors are so degenerate they've forgotten the astronomy they invented—there's an hour of running barefoot, bleeding, back home to the cenote where he stashed his pregnant wife and child. JP dodges spears, vaults waterfalls, and slogs through quicksand. It's a nonstop sprint—complete with irate mama jaguar nipping at his keister.

Following the gory trail marked by Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ, Apocalypto is a blatantly sadistic spectacle—albeit not without a certain chivalry. Women are raped and children butchered, but Mel shows no taste for such savagery. (You might even call him protective: In one feeble bid for a PG-13, the surviving children of Sugar Tit village are left to fend for themselves in the charge of a teenage baby sitter.) Mel is a glutton for male punishment. There's not a man in this movie who isn't scourged, bashed, or punctured—unless he's disemboweled.

Read the movie review

[icymist]

1. Oh Please!

from the review:
No mean panderer he, Gibson has compared the "fear-mongering" Mayan leadership to "President Bush and his guys" and their ritual human sacrifice to the deployment of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Is Mel suddendly anti-war?

[NewJeffCT]

2. Not a fan of Mel's anymore

But, he has been critical of the war on several occasions.

[hedgehog]

3. Not having seen the movie (yet) I do have to say this.

Something very bad was going down in Mexico and the Southwest just before the Spaniards came. Entire tribes appear to have vanished, fled or moved into fortresses. Whether it was a result of long term drought, farming practices that put too much pressure on the ecology or (dare one same it in this age of multiculturalism) a view of the cosmos that was bat shit crazy, the civilizations in the area were in trouble. There was quite an uproar a few years back when one archaeologist figured out how many prisoners were sacrificed at the temples and speculated that the only way to dispose of all the dead bodies was to practice ritual cannibalism. This is not to say that the Spaniards were that much of an improvement. It was sort of like being rescued from Hitler by Stalin.