Here's the truth about Mel Gibson's latest epic APOCALYPTO. I've so far read none of the reviews, so this is entirely my own, private experience viewing the quite long movie.
Like me, some viewers might get antzy and impatient in the beginning because it's unfamiliar, to me anyway, film story- telling. We're in the dark jungle, things aren't going too well and everyone is unsettled and angry. Poachers from a different ethnic (??) group or tribe are taking their food. The "poachers" turn out to be from a people forming the beginnings of civilization. But not only are they poachers, they are rounding up slaves for ritual sacrifice. In these beginning scenes I was very struck by the quality and effects of the makeup. Oscar for makeup is a cinch. Ditto cinematography.
The story is an attempt to recreate PreColumbian Mayan Indian culture in what in now the Yucatan, Mexico. Remember the step pyramid in Yucatan (State), well that is featured as a locale in the movie. (Not actually shot in Mexico; Nearby I think I did read.) Never in my long life did I dream that human heads would be filmed rolled down those steps from the top, and the body dropped on a heap of literally thousands of headless, naked bodies out of which all the hearts had been ripped while still pumping. That's an actual, real life event, the 30,000 murdered by raw heart removal and all done with amazing speed. Anthropologists have determined how long that took. Much less than a day.
Full appreciation of the intent of the moviemaker might include the assumption that the beginning fertile jungle scenes might be a metaphor for the Garden of Eden into which snakes show up. Murderous snakes. But snakes forming the beginnings of civilization nevertheless.
Near the conclusion of the massacre scenes a few sacrificial humans escape and are hunted, and hunted hard and long as if the killers feared their own death if they failed to return every single slave.
The final shots of the movie are stunning. I was taken completely by surprise!
I can't reveal the ending in good conscience, yet, by not writing that down I can't give my interpretation of the entire movie. So, I'll save that for some future Part Two.
The implications of the ending thrilled me as I have never before been thrilled at the movies.
Barry
If in your Comment you reveal the ending, I don't mind, it's just that I can't do it. Usually, BTW, I don't buy that SPOILER alert stuff, but this is different.
Oscars for Mel Gibson! I hope and pray. What guts!!
2 comments:
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It will be extremely interesting, come Oscar time, to see if the voters can separate raw talen from drunken ravings. It certainly has done well at the box offfice...which I understand baffled some critics. Love your critique. Looking forward to seeing it.
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