Posted on 12/08/2006 4:56:23 AM PST by Dr. Scarpetta
Mel Gibson is sicker than we thought.
As his new film "Apocalypto" makes clear, he's not just a drinker and a raving anti-Semite, but a man with a grotesque appetite for human suffering and an enormous talent for exploiting it.
There was great violence in "Braveheart," too, but it was cloaked in historical context. And the stripping of Jesus' flesh in "The Passion of the Christ" had the cover of Scripture. But "Apocalypto" exists solely as an action-adventure and a deft cinematic demonstration of man's capacity for cruelty.
This is the true passion of Mel.
If you can take unflinching views of throats being slit, heads being caved in, a man's face being eaten by a panther, beating hearts torn from men's chests and decapitated heads bounding down the steps of a pyramid, you're in for a first-rate spectacle of inhumanity.
"Apocalypto" is set in the final days of the crumbling Mayan civilization, when drought and disease have driven warriors farther into the Mexican rainforest to collect natives for the sacrificial altar. As no one knows better than Gibson, the gods must be appeased.
One captive is Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), a gentle hunter/gatherer who hides his pregnant mate and child in a dry well before being led away. At the temple atop a massive stone pyramid, Jaguar Paw is about to meet his maker - or the Mayans' maker, or at least the priest's knife - when fate intervenes.
A total eclipse of the sun convinces the priest that the gods' thirst for blood has been sated, sparing Jaguar and the other captives. But not for long. They're taken to a field and told to run for freedom while Mayan warriors shower them with spears and arrows.
Somehow, Jaguar clears the gauntlet and races into the jungle toward home and his family, with a band of angry, tattooed spear throwers hot on his trail and a tropical storm brewing overhead.
Is Gibson making some kind of comment about the inhumanity of non-Christian cultures - first the Jews, now the Mayans? "Apocalypto" suggests that the pagans are about to be tamed, if not have their souls saved, by Gibson's Catholic forebears rowing ashore from the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria.
More and more, Gibson's personality problems seem beyond the scope of movie reviews.
In any case, "Apocalypto" is the real deal as a jungle thriller. Its digital cinematography is gorgeous, its makeup and costumes are stunning, and its mostly nonpro cast - speaking in obscure Yucatec and translated with subtitles - is as authentic as the jungle of Veracruz where the film was shot.
Now that "Apocalypto" is being seen, four months after Gibson's arrest and tirade in Malibu, some in the media are asking whether Hollywood can forgive him by bestowing an Oscar.
What an ironic possibility! This is a movie dedicated to bloodlust (forget the gods, can the audience's thirst be sated?) and not the sort of thing Academy voters typically honors with awards.
An Oscar would not be forgiveness; it would be blindness.
I never got to see 'One Night with the King.' Do you recommend it?
great point
Are those guys prescient or what?
What did you especially like about Apocalypto?
I want to see it, but will have to close my eyes from the gore, is it easy to it coming?
If the barbarity of Communism could be captured it would make this movie pale.. And the barbarity of Islam is untold also.. Islam first makes a conquered people grovel before it savages them on many levels.. Ask the Maronites in Lebanon and the Copts in Egypt.. and the Armenian..
Maybe thats Mel's intention.. throwing a glass of cold water in peoples faces.. i.e. "get real folks"..
"...throats being slit...decapitated heads..."
Hmmm, sounds like the Daily Muslim News.
Offensive in a movie, but not in real life,eh?
Once again, its ok to be offended and outraged by
PAST atrocities, but not by the ones happening NOW.
Mayans aren't threatening us. A combination of
Islam and our own cowardice is.
Can't blame Mel for THAT bloodthirst, now can we?
At first, I thought that was a movie about a homosexual, and I didn't want to go, then I found out it was about the Queen of England, so I reluctantly went to see it. HATED IT! I thought it to be a boring rehash of the Diana fairy tale in real life of the late 20th century, seen from the otherwise unknowable eyes of the Queen herself. The guy that played Tony Blair was such a sissy I couldn't believe it. I couldn't stand the boredom, and I couldn't fall asleep, so I left and saw something else.
I haven't seen it, but everything I heard about it from people whose opinions I respect indicated that it was a good movie.
It is not nearly as bad as they say. They are trying to sell newspapers. The head bouncing down the steps is not graphic at all.
The actors. They were amazing. In particular the "hero" and main "villain" were just incredible. One of the most memorable villains in film history. The actors do so much with their eyes and expressions. And they are all complete unknowns--I can't even imagine how his casting director found them.
They may have,but the Aztecs were here and they were as bad or worse. Aztec priests would drag some poor fool up the steps of their pyramid lay him out on an alter hold him down while another one would take a razer sharp obsidian (black glass like stone) knife and cut his beating heart out. Afterwords the rest of the crowd there would EAT what was left of him. Cortez wrote of this in his diary when he conquered Latin America.
Bunch of hypocrites.
"First we had "Braveheart" and "The Patriot", which got a whole bunch of conservatives into the theaters to watch his stuff. (And I was one of them, although the violence in "The Patriot" repulsed me, and it was NOT historically accurate.) Then he made "The Passion," and got millions of Christians into the theaters to be traumatized by the violence he showed in exquisite detail."
A lot of conservatives are men, we enjoyed the combat scenes in Braveheart and The Patriot, many of us carry guns and expensive fighting knives every day, even though we are just regular citizens.
Many of us are veterans, we liked the way the tomahawk was used in The Patriot, some of us own tomahawks and it has been used by American GIs in hand to hand combat in Iraq.
I look forward to seeing Mel's latest movie, and as someone that has to respond to a woman's scream, anytime, anywhere, no matter the odds, or whether I am armed or not, I hope that I pick up just a little something from his scenes of violence.
I don't like slasher films, but I do enjoy Mel's manly, realistic portrayals of combat, where the good guys are always fighting for a good cause, and I hope all American males learn the noble, manly message that runs through his films like Braveheart, The Patriot, We Were Soldiers, The Passion, and I hope Apocalypto.
Mel Gibson is clearly a madman. At least he's channeling his madness into movies, instead of more harmful activities.
Mel is building a case for Jesus through a series of movies . And yes, he is that smart.
The difference is nobody tries to pretend Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Saw are some form of high art that needs to be respected or have major awards bestowed upon them. Since Braveheart Gibson's movies have (with a couple of exceptions) been getting more and more gruesome, using many more gallons of kero syrup than all but the cheesiest of slasher films, and yet he runs around insisting they're high art and important films with important messages. At some point somebody needs to sit Mel down and explain to him that he's really on the path to becoming Wes Craven with subtitles.
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