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From the opening moments, possibly even before the opening moments considering the ridiculously Romanesque moniker it has been saddled with, but definitely from the opening moments, wherein Mel tries to show us that his suburban jungle Mayans are just like your average modern American consumer, and which ends up playing out as if the cast of American Pie or Old School went tapir hunting via a time machine, all the way to the white-man-cometh finale full of machismo rhetoric and a hell of a lot of rain forest backdropped posing contests between our young nubile hero, Jaguar Paw and his supposed arch-nemesis - for lack of a better term - who seems to be stuck somewhere in a cross between Stallone's Judge Dredd and just about any scenery-chomping crony in just about any gladiator movie, we get Mel Gibson's preposterous take on a civilization's twilight moments in the sun - most of who's historical accuracy Gibson has freely admitted to making up.
Like in his The Passion of The Christ - a much bally-hooed film that split critics and audiences alike right down the proverbial middle, and of which I somewhat sheepishly admit to liking for the most part - Gibson has decided to use the language of the time (or in reality, a modern-day Mexican-Indian dialect known as Yucatec) and subtitling the film. Now if it is one thing Americans are notorious for hating, it is having to "read" a film, but personally, as Kelsey Grammer's Frasier said when asked if he minded subtitles, I prefer them, so that aspect of the film, which may be off-putting to the typical low brow Hollywood fare watchers, does not concern me, nor does any of Gibson's drunken anti-Semitic babbling - if he wants to say something he has the right to, no matter how whacked-out or indecent such things may be. No, it is not any of these factors that make me turn a forked tongue toward Apocalypto. It is the fact that this film is sincerely one of the most atrociously reprehensible films ever created. Created out of, one suspects, a dug up grave of bad movie ideas, spare backlot parts and a misbegotten brain acquired from someone surreptitiously named Abby Normal.
No, it is not Mel's inane Holocaust-denying soap-boxing or any other politically-motivated reasons (of which I was accused by at least one irate reader who said Mel would live on forever and I would eventually be forgotten), but instead it simply boils down to the fact that Apocalypto is ridiculous, horrible, comical, contemptible, daffy, derisory, droll, fantastic, farcical, fool-headed, goofy, grotesque, harebrained, laughable, ludicrous, nonsensical, nutty, outrageous, preposterous, risible, silly, slaphappy, stupid, unbelievable and downright vulgar. To put it plainly and simply, without the cutting and pasting of a thesaurus, Apocalypto is a big load of crap. I am talking Waterworld bad. I am talking Battlefield Earth bad. Sure it may be an overall better film than those loads of Dude Where's my Car, Van Wilder, White Chicks drivel that cogs the waterways of modern American cinema, yet the sheer audacity with which Gibson flails this film at us, makes it a far more dangerous work of art than all the Wayans Brothers/Adam Sandler movies put together. Just like the pseudo-Christian pomposity of Forrest Gump or the bombastic locution of Gibson's own Braveheart, Apocalypto (I still cannot stop laughing over that title) is the latest in a line of filmmaking - perpetrated by the likes of James Cameron, George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis and the evil one himself, Mr. Spielberg - that downgrades the art of cinema even further and faster than any of the aforementioned lowest-common denominator chum-chum films of banal Hollywood neophytes, for these are films made by the supposed elite of the West Coast and therefore cost more (and I do not mean dollar-wise) in the long run.
The film simply fails in just about every aspect (although visually, it sure is pretty when it needs to be and ugly when it needs to be), from the sock-puppet special effects to the blood-drenched epileptic acting to the hysterical historical uncertainties (the Mayans basically invented astronomy and were more well-versed in the ways of the stars than pretty much any ancient civilization, save possibly the Egyptians, which makes their mumbo-jumbo hoodoo hubbub over a solar eclipse just plain ludicrous) right down to the "ripping off" of imagery from the already laughable enough Last of the Mohicans - complete with Daniel Day-Lewis' over-the-top "I will return, I promise" dialogue. Why this film is being hurrahed by so many of my fellow critics I just do not understand. It is no surprise when the praising comes from the typical media whore critics, who cry 'masterpiece' at the sight of the first big name star (in this case that would have to be the director), but when it comes from the smaller independent papers as well, it is quite unfathomable indeed. God bless J. Hoberman over at the Village Voice for keeping his integrity against the rising waters of laudation.
Sure, there is no accounting for taste in the modern moviegoer, after all the rather staid effrontery that is Titanic is the top grossing film of all-time and anything with a CGI-created wise-cracking animal or ogre turns mega boffo box office and every Steven, George and Clint can make the number one spot with a bullet on the pages of Daily Variety, but the shameful praise heaped upon this trash pile should is truly a befuddlement of the senses. The ludicrous nature of this film should be a no-brainer, which, i am guessing also describes the script of this awful ode to the corrupting power of Paganism.
The saddest thing of all though, is how much praise, accolades, box office boffo and awards this film will recieve in comparison to the similarly set yet infinitely greater and ultimately more sublime Terrence Malick masterpiece, The New World.
And to just heap insult upon injury, in the end, after all the fun and romp of Mayan on Mayan crime, it is the white man, floating ashore in the great sailing ships, poised like the protectors of Heaven and Earth, who saves our haplessly bravura'd hero. Sure, within a decade or so, most of these noble tribes will be eradicated from existence by the small pox infested, slave-trading, genocidal maniacs that were the conquistadors, but there is no need to go into that here. It is enough to know that it was the white man who saved this poor wretched tan-skinned creature kittenishly known as Jaguar Paw. Most moviegoers, expecially those who do not like to "read" a movie, probably do not even realize that the Mayan civilization died out more than two hundred years before the first Old World settlers ever showed up upon the shores of the New World, making Mel's finale as tainted as the rest of his sadistic little bloodletting.
I suppose I have been hitting a bit hard here and I suppose it is bad form indeed to take such wicked glee in attacking a film so viscously and scathingly, yet one should not be able to help oneself after seeing a film of this infinite detestability. Where Braveheart had political motives (no matter how warped) and The Passion had spiritual ones, Apocalypto is merely sadism for the sake of sadism. A friend with whom I torturously sat through this film with, said of it afterward that it was like a mix of Michael Mann's Last of the Mohicans, the video game Pitfall and the Inuit film Fast Runner, without the goodness of any of them seeping through.
- December 18, 2006
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