Brutally Honest (Apocalypto)

Brutally Honest The multicultural set doesn't like Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto" because of its depiction of Mayan brutality.

MEL GIBSON'S Apocalypto is one of the few films that can rightly be described as a journey. The viewer is snatched from the confines (and comforts) of a Hollywood movie and thrown deep into the jungles of Central America. The film itself is a visual masterpiece; shot entirely in a Mayan dialect, Gibson flexes his visual muscles to show rather than tell.

Billed as a historical drama, Apocalypto is actually part revenge flick and part chase flick. After being brutally taken from his idyllic home (where his beloved father's throat was slit by the cruelest of his captors), the hero, Jaguar Paw, narrowly escapes having his heart torn from his chest as part of a human sacrifice. He then leads his tormentors on a harrowing chase through the jungle, utilizing his knowledge of the familiar terrain that surrounds his village to pick off his enemies one by one.

The plot itself is almost secondary, and little more than an excuse for Gibson to show off his phenomenal film making talents. In addition to the stunning jungle scenes, Gibson treats us to a view of what life in a vast Mayan city may have been like at the height of its culture. Immense pyramids rise out of the foliage; prisoners are sold as slaves and sacrificed in incredibly brutal ways; those not sacrificed are used for human target practice. If you can handle gore (and really, the movie is no more violent--and in some ways, far less so--than, say, Braveheart, which took home 5 Oscars, including Best Picture), do yourself a favor and see this innovative, unique movie.

AS INTERESTING as the film itself has been the reaction to it by film critics and historians alike. Those who praise the movie almost uniformly mention, if not condemn, Gibson's infamous anti-Semitic outburst (in the New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote that "say what you will about him--about his problem with booze or his problem with Jews--he is a serious filmmaker").

Other critics have, curiously, dismissed the film because it doesn't inform us about some of the accomplishments of the Mayans. "It teaches us nothing about Mayan civilization, religion, or cultural innovations (Calendars? Hieroglyphic writing? Some of the largest pyramids on Earth?)," Dana Stevens wrote in Slate. "Rather, Gibson's fascination with the Mayans seems to spring entirely from the fact (or fantasy) that they were exotic badasses who knew how to whomp the hell out of one another, old-school."

This is a strange criticism. If you were interested in boning up on calendars, hieroglyphics, and pyramids you could simply watch a middle-school film strip. And who complained that in Gladiator Ridley Scott showed epic battle scenes and vicious gladiatorial combat instead of teaching us how the aqueducts were built?

AND THEN there have been the multi-culturist complaints. Ignacio Ochoa, the director of the Nahual Foundation, says that "Gibson replays, in glorious big budget Technicolor, an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans." Julia Guernsey, an assistant professor in the department of art and art history at the University of Texas told a reporter after viewing the film, "I hate it. I despise it. I think it's despicable. It's offensive to Maya people. It's offensive to those of us who try to teach cultural sensitivity and alternative world views that might not match our own 21st century Western ones but are nonetheless valid."

Newsweek reports that "although a few Mayan murals do illustrate the capture and even torture of prisoners, none depicts decapitation" as a mural in a trailer for the film does. "That is wrong. It's just plain wrong," the magazine quotes Harvard professor William Fash as saying.

Karl Taube, a professor of anthropology at UC Riverside, complained to the Washington Post about the portrayal of slaves building the Mayan pyramids. "We have no evidence of large numbers of slaves," he told the paper.

Even the mere arrival, at the end of the film, of Spanish explorers has been lambasted as culturally insensitive. Here's Guernsey, again, providing a questionable interpretation of the film's final minutes: "And the ending with the arrival of the Spanish (conquistadors) underscored the film's message that this culture is doomed because of its own brutality. The implied message is that it's Christianity that saves these brutal savages."

But none of these complaints holds up particularly well under scrutiny. After all, while it may not mesh well with their post-conquest victimology, the Mayans did partake of bloody human sacrifice. Consider this description of a human sacrifice from the sixth edition of University of Pennsylvania professor Robert Sharer's definitive The Ancient Maya:

The intended victim was stripped, painted blue (the sacrificial color), and adorned with a special peaked headdress, then led to the place of sacrifice, usually either the temple courtyard or the summit of a temple platform. After the evil spirits were expelled, the altar, usually a convex stone that curved the victim's breast upward, was smeared with the sacred blue paint. The four chaakob, also painted blue, grasped the victim by the arms and legs and stretched him on his back over the altar. The Nacom then plunged the sacrificial flint knife into the victim's ribs just below the left breast, pulled out the still-beating heart, and handed it to the chilan, or officiating priest.

After the Spanish conquest, the Mayans adapted their brutal methods of pleasing the gods to coexist with Christianity. Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570 contains the following description from a contemporary source of a post-invasion sacrifice:

The one called Ah Chable they crucified and they nailed him to a great cross made for the purpose, and they put him on the cross alive and nailed his hands with two nails and tied his feet . . . with a thin rope. And those who nailed and crucified the said boy were the ah-kines who are now dead, which was done with consent of all those who were there. And after [he was] crucified they raised the cross on high and the said boy was crying out, and so they held it on high, and then they lowered it, [and] put on the cross, they took out his heart.

As for whether or not there have been any murals found portraying decapitation, as Prof. Fash complains, heads were certainly cut off in ceremonial fashion by the Mayans. Again, The Ancient Maya: "The sacrifice of captive kings, while uncommon, seems to have called for a special ritual decapitation . . . The decapitation of a captured ruler may have been performed as the climax of a ritual ball game, as a commemoration of the Hero Twins' defeat of the lords of the underworld in the Maya creation myth."

The protestation against Mayan slavery, is also off the mark: The Ancient Maya repeatedly refers to the purchasing of slaves. The first European contact with the Maya resulted, ironically, in the Spaniards being enslaved. After a shipwreck, Spanish

survivors landed on the east coast of Yucatan, where they were seized by a Maya lord, who sacrificed Valdivia and four companions and gave their bodies to his people for a feast. Geronimo de Aguilar, Gonzalo de Guerrero, and five others were spared for the moment. . . . Aguilar and his companions escaped and fled to the country of another lord, an enemy of the first chieftain. The second lord enslaved the Spaniards, and soon all of them except Aguilar and Guerrero died.

And it should be remembered that when the Spanish arrived in force, they had little problem recruiting allies as some Mayans fought with the Spanish against their own Mayan enemies. Matthew Restall's Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest reports that

what has so often been ignored or forgotten is the fact that Spaniards tended also to be outnumbered by their own native allies . . . In time, Mayas from the Calkini region and other parts of Yucatan would accompany Spaniards into unconquered regions of the peninsula as porters, warriors, and auxiliaries of various kinds. Companies of archers were under permanent commission in the Maya towns of Tekax and Oxkutzcab, regularly called upon to man or assist in raids into the unconquered regions south of the colony of Yucatan. As late as the 1690s Mayas from over a dozen Yucatec towns--organized into companies under their own officers and armed with muskets, axes, machetes, and bows and arrows--fought other Mayas in support of Spanish Conquest endeavors in the Petén region that is now northern Guatemala.

WHICH IS NOT TO SAY that Gibson's film is an entirely accurate portrayal of life in a Mayan village. As they say in the business, for the sake of narrative, certain facts have been altered. The conflation of showing massive temples and then depicting the arrival of the Spanish at the end of the film is almost certainly anachronistic. Though Apocalypto is purposefully vague about its time frame, the appearance of Spanish galleons and conquistadors at the end of the film (as well as the sight of a little girl who might be suffering from small pox) suggests the action takes place in the early- or mid-16th century. But according to Sharer, "by 900 . . . monumental construction--temples, palaces, ball courts . . . [had] ceased at most sites, as did associated features such as elaborate royal tombs and the carved stone and modeled stucco work used to adorn buildings."

Almost any historical drama will contain such problems. That being said, it is specious for professional historians and grievance groups alike to argue that Apocalypto is a wonton desecration of the memories of the Mayan people. While it may be an inconvenient fact that the Mayans were skilled at the art of human cruelty, it is, nevertheless, a fact.

Whatever inchoherent, contradicting, clusters of fact that can be assembled to make communism sound good are what they will teach/preach

I talked to someone from Guatemala who saw this film. They are very familiar with Mayan culture and they loved the movie. The gore didn't bother them. I think I want to see this movie. "Braveheart" was my favorite movie.

Of the two, I'll take the "naturalistic materialists". At least you can talk facts to them, 1+1 still equals 2 to them. Whereas with those in the humanities departments, they'd accuse you of being judgmental and dogmatic.

Nothing cheers me more than the sound of Leftists whining.

Wonder why Gibson didn't avoid the anachronism by making the movie about the Aztecs who were at the height of their civilization when the Spanish arrived.

One of the primary objections to "Apocalypto" put forth by film critics is that it is overly violent.

Meanwhile the critics like movies like SAW I,II&III, Black Christmas (WTF??) and other lovely movies about maniacs slicing, dicing and killing even more wantonly than a Mayan thoracic ripper priest hopped up on chocolate cocaine sauce.

the sound of Leftists whining.

Modern leftists think every film should be a propaganda film. They love paying for propaganda to shore up their shaky beliefs, to vent their envy, and exercise their vanity.

Old movies were made for their entertainment value. The change to pushing leftism seemed to really take off in the 1980s. Maybe it was a response to the Ronald Reagan years. Sitting through movies just isn't as entertaining anymore.

Can either one of you give me a basic outline of the plot? I don't get the story and the point of the movie.

In Mayan Mexico, inhabitants of a peaceful jungle village are attacked and enslaved by warlike city dwellers. The hero manages to hide his very pregnant wife in a dry well before he himself is captured. The city dwellers, their culture in crisis, offer their captives as gruesome human sacrifices to the gods they feel have abandoned them. The hero manages to escape, and is pursued.

The film features stunning imagery, imaginative production design, striking actors, and exciting action. There are also fascinating themes to consider in this violent but gripping and daringly original thriller.

Good morning. "Julia Guernsey, an assistant professor in the department of art and art history at the University of Texas"

Isn't a Guernsey a cow?

Yes

50 posted on 12/16/2006 1:07:05 AM PST by FreedomPoster (Guns themselves are fairly robust; their chief enemies are rust and politicians) (NRA)

When I was in the 6th grade I wrote a report on the local Indian tribe of my area. They turned out to be cannibals. They seemed to be more backward than portrayed in any other medium. I was used to cowboys and Indian movies and had visited reservations on vacation. These were more like something from Africa and cave men days. It is probably so politically incorrect today, the Karankawa's will probably be forgotten. They didn't seem noble to me. From what I could tell, they deserved to be wiped out.

And here's an interview with her. She's a whiner from the get-go.

'Apocalypto' is an insult to Maya culture, one expert says
A history professor explains where Mel Gibson got it very, very wrong
http://www.austin360.com/movies/content/shared/movies/stories/2006/12/history.html

52 posted on 12/16/2006 1:29:41 AM PST by FreedomPoster (Guns themselves are fairly robust; their chief enemies are rust and politicians) (NRA)

That's what I'm thinking, too. The stuff about the film being about the decay of civilation is just fluff to throw off the libs. What Gibson is really doing is embedding in people's minds a visual argument against the PC notion of a peaceful pre-Christian America. The film is ultimately an apologetic for the civilizing work of the Catholic church.

And who complained that in Gladiator Ridley Scott showed epic battle scenes and vicious gladiatorial combat instead of teaching us how the aqueducts were built?

POINT!

(Julia Guernsey) "I hate it. I despise it. I think it's despicable. It's offensive to Maya people. It's offensive to those of us who try to teach cultural sensitivity and alternative world views that might not match our own 21st century Western ones but are nonetheless valid."

Translation: "I'm royally pi$$ed because someone dares shine the light of truth on the lies we've been peddling in the name of 'cultural sensitivity' for the last 20 years."

But how can you trust them when they betray their own principals in their alliance with the post-modern fundies? Do they even really believe in those modern rationalistic principals if they worship the earth and refuse say a word against the demands of "indigenous" activists when the latter attack science and rationality itself?

Something very funny is going on here.

I'll patiently wait till it's in video and available from the library...I won't enrich Gibson with my money.

I know, which is why I won't even rent the video. I'll check it out from the library when they obtain it.

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