[Aztlan] Apocalypto - Review?

[Sam Edgerton]

My wife and I too saw "Apocalypto" on national opening night yesterday - we 
could hardly wait! While it's a rip-roaring adventure and loaded with 
violence, I, particularly, didn't think it at all as objectionable as Julia 
found.   Yes, she is right that there are a lot of inaccuracies (but no 
more than in the usual Hollywood historical extravaganzas - remember highly 
touted "Gladiator"?), but I don't at all buy her interpretation of Gibson's 
supposed political "message." Indeed, I also read all the pre-previews in 
the NYTIMES, etc., that sought to reveal suspicious parallels between 
Gibson's pro-ultra-Catholicism, anti-Jewish bigotry, and premonitions of 
civilizational armaggedon.   Perhaps such hints are there, but to me they 
were too covert to take seriously.  The appearance at the very end of the 
movie of a long boat approaching the beach loaded with steel-helmeted 
Spanish conquistadors in the prow and one Franciscan-looking friar holding 
a cross way back in the stern, did not necessarily signal that Gibson was 
preaching that Christianity had at last arrived to save the the Maya from 
primitive savagery. In fact as Jaguar Paw and his attractive wife and baby 
children eye the strange galleons off shore, he simply says to her, "Let us 
return to the forest, and begin our life anew!" After their horrendous 
experiences that make up most of the film's story, that's a nice finish 
line  that simply reiterates the eternal human quest for peace and 
survival, and hardly implies some hidden Christian agenda. Sometimes such 
an innocent statement of hope, is just an innocent statement of 
hope!  However, it did strike me that Gibson's movie really isn't about the 
Maya at all, especially since it was filmed in Veracruz jungle and not the 
scrubby Yucatan. Had he labelled it a story of conflict between the 
Huastecs and Aztecs, it would have made more sense geographically, 
chronologically, and even ideologically.
  Sam Edgerton



At 08:37 AM 12/9/2006 -0600, you wrote:

>'Apocalypto' is an insult to Maya culture, one expert says
>An <Art> history professor explains where Mel Gibson got it very, very wrong
>By Chris Garcia
>AMERICAN-STATESMAN FILM WRITER
>Wednesday, December 06, 2006
>As we stagger out of a sneak peek of Mel Gibson's Maya historical thriller 
>"Apocalypto," Julia Guernsey is visibly shaken. She's upset and not a 
>little angry. She barely can contain her disgust, but she also can barely 
>speak. I'm a little worried. Guernsey is an assistant professor in the 
>Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas. Given her 
>emphasis on pre-Columbian Mesoamerican art and culture, we invited 
>Guernsey along to the preview last week so she could illuminate where 
>Gibson got his history right and where he got it wrong.