Mel Gibson has had a bad year. Apocalypto isn't going to make it any better. Gibson's outline for the piece -- a lengthy, action-filled run-or-die story set in the midst of ancient Mayan culture -- didn't exactly sound like a rousing crowd-pleaser, and his DUI bust and subsequent rantings took even more of the luster off his star power. But Apocalypto isn't as atypical as it may seem -- from Braveheart on, Gibson's directorial efforts have been fairly blood-soaked historical exercises -- and Apocalyto isn't just more of the same, it's entirely too much of the same.
Apocalypto's plot is simple, and you can sense the mythic ideas the script was formed around; a man, captured by killers, has to escape them and race home to save his family. Films about early cultures are always tricky, but you can feel the desire to keep it simple: In many ways, Apocalypto is a pretty stripped-down affair. Our hero is on the hunt, he pauses at home, and then he is in peril and in flight. And yet, the resources brought to bear here and the decisions made -- to shoot in the original Mayan dialect, in Mexico, for a finished film with CGI-effects and huge practical stunts -- bloat that premise up with the kind of excess that money, in fact, can buy. (Shot for approximately $40 million, it's nearly impossible to imagine Apocalypto making more than a quarter of that investment back.)Stand-up comedian Patton Oswalt does a brilliant riff in his act about people who watch historical dramas and impose anachronistic modern sensibilities on them; his example involves mocking a progressive who derides the racial and sexist attitudes of the Old West as depicted in The Searchers. Part of me thought that maybe I was just doing that with Apocalypto, recoiling from an accurate depiction of a long-gone world of vitality and violence that most people in the modern world have no contact with. But I know full well that life in the state of nature is nasty, brutish and short; the fact is that Apocalypto is nasty, brutish and long. The film begins as a group of Mayan hunters chase their prey through the rain forest; after a gore-laden sequence of the men slaughtering their catch mixed with a hokey, possibly-intended-to-be-comic sequence of mother-in-law-jokes and (literal) ball-busting among the hunting party, the hunters see a bloodied, beaten group of men and women moving through the forest. They explain that their village was destroyed; they simply want safe passage. As the hunters -- including the youth Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) -- go home, hunt leader (and Jaguar Paw's father) Flint Sky (Morris Birdyellowhead) decides to not tell the village of the haunted refugees they saw; what would be the point of such sad news? As their own village is attacked by warriors that night, it becomes clear that a warning might have been a good idea. ...
The hunters are taken off to the sacrifice temple of the invaders, and it's here you get a real sense of Gibson's agenda. Any reasonably intelligent person is aware that the Maya practiced human sacrifice; still, if you want to be sure the audience understands, maybe you mention it in exposition; maybe you show it obliquely. What does Gibson do? He gives us a full sacrifice sequence -- complete with every knife puncture, slash and a still-pulsing heart held aloft -- and then, just in case we didn't get it, gives us another. I hate the popular parlor game of psychoanalyzing directors by their work -- and once you meet, say, David Cronenberg, and discover what a warm fellow is behind such cold films, you realize that's a pretty fruitless exercise most of the time, anyhow. But there's such a rank, greasy streak of sadism in Gibson's work -- from Braveheart's disemboweling to The Passion's flogging to the crazy, unending list of gory deaths in Apocalypto -- that you can't help but think that there must be something a little wrong with the guy. Much of the violence in The Passion was written off as being faithful to the depiction of what is at the very least a state-sponsored execution, and also one of the best-known sequences of physical suffering in world literature. After the box office success of The Passion, Gibson could have made any film he wanted; the fact he chose Apocalypto's savage, primal vision is pretty telling.
So, in his first movie in years where Gibson can't defend his love for blood by hiding behind Christ's robes like a naughty child behind his mother's skirts, what do we get? Bloodshed, brutality -- and boredom. In Apocalypto, the ineptitude of the action sequences is almost enough to drown out how bloody they are, and vice-versa. When a character is, say, killed by a panther, you simultaneously find yourself nauseated by the level of effects brought to bear (you witness a jaw dislocated by the panther's bite depicted with almost pornographic attention) and startled by the clumsiness of other filmmaking choices (including a lunging panther-puppet so unconvincing, it's like a 30-year old refugee from the Jim Henson second-hand bin).
And there are other bizarre choices from Gibson and co-writer Farhad Safinia -- an almost-comical twist ending, and a structure that cuts between Jaguar Paw's chase and his pregnant wife Seven (Dalia Hernandez) who is trapped in a well -- or, a well-like crevasse -- with their son. Some will insist that Apocalypto is a metaphor -- for the end of empire, for the triumph of humanistic hunter-gatherer cultures over warfaring ones, for man's inhumanity to man -- but Apocalypto's so damn broad and random it's got the sprawling shape of a Rorscach inkblot; look at it long enough, and it can resemble anything you want it to be. But resembling deeper meaning isn't the same thing as having deeper meaning, and who has time for deeper meaning when you can instead offer a slow-mo shot of a leaping, biting rattlesnake? I keep coming back to the violence in Apocalypto, but then again, so does Gibson. And it turns out the Emperor's still naked even when he's covered in blood. Apocalypto is a career-ending flop, and easily the worst movie of 2006.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
12-07-2006 @ 8:37AM
Gerry said...
Get off the fence. Tell us what you really think!
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12-07-2006 @ 9:38AM
laura said...
Mission impossible 3, Little Man, The Davinci Code, Click, The Pink Panther, Nacho Libre, Miami Vice, Poseidon, The Omen, The Lake house, The Prestige, The Fountain, The Illusionist, the Wicker Man, the black dahlia, My super x- girlfriend, ATL, Marie Antoinette, Bobby,
All of these can be called “the worst film” of 2006 in my book not Apocalypto, Cmon aren’t you just a bit harsh on Mr. Gibson, you don’t like him personally, that’s obvious but the man takes risks, works really hard, and more importantly is a human being who deserves forgiveness if he asked for it which he did. The Passion of the Christ was supposed to not make any money right? And it ended up being the top grossing rated R movie of all time; it had a budget of 25 million and has to date 611 million dollars!!! I cannot wait to see Apocalypto, hear the language, take in the sight and sounds, He took a crew of unknown actors, and taught them to act, and I would like to see most directors in the business attempt that feat.
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12-07-2006 @ 10:37AM
Mike said...
This seems more a comment on Gibson than the actual film. Typical and not at all unexpected. Should he be sent to a re-education camp?
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12-07-2006 @ 10:55AM
Francesco said...
"Shot for approximately $40 million, it's nearly impossible to imagine Apocalypto making more than a quarter of that investment back."
This statement is absolutely ludicrous. I do not have a crystal ball but to say that this movie will not make that much is just silly. The movie looks visually stunning, it's about a culture that we rarely see films about and there is controversy surroudning its maker. Even if the movie is straight garbage and is gory, people will still be driven to see it.
How much will it make? Who knows? But to say it won't make more than $50mm just shows a blind distaste for the filmmaker.
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12-07-2006 @ 11:15AM
Gerry said...
Keeping in mind the box office success of The New World I think James' comments are fair enough. The Passion's box office was ultimately related to an energetic campaign to motivate Christians to see the film. This will not be the case with Apocalypto. As regards James' other comments about the sadisstic streak that runs through Gibson's movies again I feel he is right on the mark. He seems to equate suffering with righteousness, a concept that deserves every refutation.
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12-07-2006 @ 11:22AM
Nick James said...
I highly doubt this will make less than $40 million. It could easily do $20-$30 million opening weekend alone.
I'm sure it will definitely pitter out afterwards, and won't be a blockbuster smash that Gibson may be hoping for...
But $40 million? That budget is nothing for a movie like this.
As for my thoughts on it, well, I don't know. I still remember that damn trailer that showed up where Mel Gibson inserted his hobo self into a frame Tyler Durden style.
I'll see it.
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12-07-2006 @ 11:27AM
gadlaw said...
Laura, you forgot Descent - the biggest steaming pile of bilge I've seen continually pimped here. The Omen remake was also hideous and someone should have to go to jail for making that one. Hours of my life I'll never get back. A lot of movies get to stand in line as the worst movies of 2006 before Apocalypto gets in line. A lot of really bad movies this year which have not been as emotionally and enthusiastically evicerated as Apocalypto has been before it was even seen. What a shock when those same people who went crazy when Mel Gibson has his most recent meltdown are also righteously indigant over this movie. I haven't looked and researched what this reviewer previously wrote but it seems to me that gore is often times seen as a plus in a movie being reviewed at least here that's the case.
This reviewer takes umbrage at the full depiction of the human sacrifices shown and says that we know all about that so why show it? Well, one theory is that while we do know that happened, the full impact of that fact can't be provided by a pan upward and mood music. Too many people would only remember pretty feather costumes and a good soundtrack when it's precisely the complete brutality of it that Mel wants to impact upon you. I don't have a lot of confidence in the ability of people to envision a brutality they should reject that happened thousands of years ago when if you mention Rwandian genocide, Pol Pot Genocide, the holocast or the Armenian genocide in Turkey and get blank stares.
I think Mel is right in assuming that to get a larger audience to understand what is happening you can't assume they know anything about history or the culture being depicted. When you say "a rank, greasy streak of sadism in Gibson's work" I wonder again if you are having difficulty seperating Mel Gibson from his work. If William Wallace hadn't actually been disemboweled, tortured and cut in pieces you might have something there in your criticism. If Jesus hadn't been whipped, tortured and nailed up to a cross and Mel depicted that in his movie then I would agree with you. Cecil B. DeMille already did the majestic, antiseptic uplifting and bloodless version of Jesus but Mel Gibson is Catholic and the Catholic Jesus is nailed on the cross and the Catholic religious depictions of Jesus and the twelve stations of the cross are shown as horrible and bloody. You actually see blood in the wounds of Jesus and you see his agony. Protestism took Jesus off the cross, scrubbed that cross clean and put it back up as a symbol and from your review I see you'd rather see that cleaner, intellectual vision. Nothing wrong with that point of view and you can see that vision many places. I know that Mel Gibson sees the story of Jesus and he sees history from that viseral, catholic point of view as a very real, very bloody history or imagined history that he depicts in his movies. Be armed with that knowledge before heading out to see Apocalypto. Personally I'll be there tomorrow and see for myself.
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12-07-2006 @ 11:33AM
Andy said...
Yes, stick to the reviewing James. Leave the box office predictions to those nerds on David Poland's blog.
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12-07-2006 @ 11:42AM
James said...
Mike: I don't think Gibson should be sent to a re-education camp; Film School, maybe.
And Francesco, I don't have a "blind distate" for Mel Gibson: I have a rational, insightful, well-thought out dislike of Mr. Gibson's directorial work.
And finally, to all who question my Judgment of th Box Office for Apocalypto, you're probably right; then again, lots of things that are idiotic -- Nascar Merchandise, Thomas Kincaid paintings, The West Wing on DVD -- make money. So what does that mean?
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12-07-2006 @ 12:58PM
gadlaw said...
"And finally, to all who question my Judgment of th (the or teh?) Box Office for Apocalypto, you're probably right; then again, lots of things that are idiotic -- Nascar Merchandise, Thomas Kincaid paintings, The West Wing on DVD -- make money. So what does that mean?"
Oh I know this one! It either means people are dumb and you're smarter than anyone else or perhaps it means that different people have different tastes in sports, entertainment and art. I think you meant the second one.
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12-07-2006 @ 1:00PM
pete said...
James: ease up on the Tang. This movie will gross $40 Million in matinees on the first day alone. To say otherwise is simply facetious, irrelevant, and unremarkular. Pls. correct the above.
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12-07-2006 @ 1:05PM
Mike said...
James; thanks for the honesty in your additional comments. I'm sorry. I had you confused with a film
critic.
Yes, let's judge ALL of Hollywood for their moral failures. Forget "Chinatown", it was directed by a rapist. John Huston's attitude toward child rearing was, to some, reprehensible. So there goes "Maltese Falcon", "Night of the Iguana and his entire body of work.
I'm not comparing Gibson's work to either of these directors. I'm saying "The guy's flawed. Be a professional and separate the art from the artist."
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12-07-2006 @ 1:55PM
dkev said...
It looks to me as if the reviewer went in to this movie not wanting to hate it, so he came away that way. As far as being the worst movie of '06? Sorry, but not even close. That was just a dumb statement. Overall, I have to say this was the worst review of '06.
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12-07-2006 @ 2:28PM
jmchez said...
How come so many reviewers at Cinematical just loved the execrable "Hostel" and the "Saw" series in which torture and mutilation are shown as mindless entertainment while now thrashing "Apocalypto" for an unflinching display of a veridic historical horror?
The late Vincent Camby of the New York Times once wrote that he despised movies like "Die Hard 2" in which hundreds of people got slaughtered (cleanly or out of camera range) yet he would forever defend his praise of a movie like the "The Wild Bunch" because the realistic violence in that movie was not mindless but there to add to the drama and message of the story.
Movies like the "Lord of the Ring" series are praised for transporting the viewer to fantastic and unbelievable worlds that we could never have imagined by ourselves. "Apocalypto" looks like a film that will do the same but its incredible and unbelievable world really did exist.
I want to see it.
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12-07-2006 @ 3:38PM
Scott Weinberg said...
"How come so many reviewers at Cinematical just loved the execrable "Hostel" and the "Saw" series in which torture and mutilation are shown as mindless entertainment while now thrashing "Apocalypto" for an unflinching display of a veridic historical horror?"
--Because James and I are different people. We have lots of writers here!
For the record, I liked "Apocalypto" quite a bit. I respectfully disagree with some of JR's opinions, but this is a damn fine review either way.
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12-07-2006 @ 6:33PM
HenryJonesJr said...
Worst review of '06! James was obviously as biased against this movie as Mel Gibson is against Jews. Cinematical ends up the one looking bad here for hosting this crap.
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12-08-2006 @ 12:42AM
shawn said...
i look foward to seeing the film. i like seeing films that attempt to do something different or interesting.
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12-08-2006 @ 8:25AM
Kristian said...
God, you lot are ridiculous. Can't you see that Mel Gibson clearly has some kind of issues, hence the unreal level of violence in this and Passion and Braveheart? And his directing is like horror movie 101. He is not a brave or interesting film maker like many of you seem to think he is.
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12-08-2006 @ 11:15AM
laura said...
kristian--"unreal" level of violence? You do understand history right, how the Mayans were a bloody bunch, they played a game called Ulama where the losing team was butchered!! They worshipped Gods which called for human sacrifice, and they didnt use a swift stroke, they gutted live human beings. As for Braveheart, again, research battles of the highlanders and the archeological evidence that backs that up. Mel Gibson is a brave filmaker, Studios would touch Passion for fear it was too controversial, so he did it on his own basically, that my dear in hollywood terms is the definition of brave. PLUS having alcoholism in my family, to admit it is brave in itself. Glass houses come to mind
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12-08-2006 @ 4:49PM
Nick Davis said...
Excellent review. I wonder how many of the objectors have actually seen the movie, and can therefore perceive that grappling with the director's obsession with violence is absolutely mandated by the kind of movie this is. Commenting on Gibson as a director is not the same thing as commenting on Gibson's personal life or private thoughts. It's a mainstay of art criticism to compare new work to previous efforts, especially when the motifs (and, in this case, relentless self-repetitions and grisly preoccupations) are as prominent as they are in Gibson's work. What I see here is the reviewing taking Gibson seriously as a director—examining the full context of his body of work, struggling to make senes of the eccentricities and implications of these films—and finding Gibson woefully deficient by fair and honestly stated standards of film craftsmanship. Just because he hates the movie, and especially hates it because of the directorial sensibility that informs it, doesn't mean he hates Gibson "personally," or that he was predisposed against the film.
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