Apocalypto
A lot has been made of Mel Gibson’s actions as of late and probably rightly so. However whatever the man is or isn’t there is one thing that he most certainly is and that’s a good director. Braveheart and The Passion of the Christ may not be my favorite films, but you can’t deny that they are solid work. Apocalypto isn’t quite on par with those two, but it’s not too shabby and there’s a whole audience who will unexpectedly enjoy it.
Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblod) and his village live peacefully in the forest, that is until there are attacked by a group of outsiders. Jaguar Paw hides his wife and child in a pit before he starts to fend of the invaders attack. Unfortunately it is to no avail as his village is destroyed and his father murder in front of his eyes. Jaguar Paw is dragged of into the jungle to be a sacrifice, leaving his wife and child behind. Once the opportunity presents itself Jaguar Paw escapes in order to get back to his family, but not without his former captors tracking his every move.
I was quite honestly surprised by the acting in Apocalypto. I was expecting that pretty much everyone would be competent, but I ended up pretty impressed. Granted this is basically a hero’s journey with expected archetypal characters, but everyone more than pulled their weight. Youngblood in particular is able to completely convey Jaguar Paw’s coming of age, especially considering that this film is told all but completely visually.
There really is one fatal flaw to this film and that is the use of the digital camera. Any time the camera is still, especially when shooting Jaguar Paw’s family, everything is fine, but when characters are moving or there is a lot of action in general things change entirely. A couple of instances especially when a more frenetic hand held style is used or in the jaguar attack, the film looks down right amateurish. It’s almost as if we’re watching a home video a member of the crew shot of a couple guys wrestling a horrible jaguar puppet.
Now having said that, this is one fantastically gory film and as a gore fan I’d recommend it to anyone with similar tastes. Look, what you basically have here is somewhere in the ballpark of a Mayan Braveheart or Rambo. Just substitute William Wallace’s wife for Jaguar Paw’s father. A lot of has been made of the sacrifice scene where heads roll from the top of the temple to the crowd below, but that has more to do with spectacle rather that anything else. It’s all the other little touches when people get speared or clubbed in the head that takes the action up a notch further than most would. I think we all learned from The Passion of the Christ that Mel loves his blood soaked violence and he doesn’t disappoint here.
Even though I liked this film I have to admit that the story itself is fairly simple. In fact, those who are hesitant about seeing Apocalypto due to it’s subtitles shouldn’t worry due to the fact that I’m fairly certain that you could follow the story without every reading a single word. That isn’t necessarily a criticism but as I say it is a simple, classic story and Gibson is able to tell it with great visual precision. Great care was taken to make Apocalypto into a classic story involving mythic archetypal characters. I think it comes up short in that regard, but as visceral action film it more than succeeds.
The Grade
- Story: B
- Acting: B+
- Visuals: C
- Originality: C
- Enjoyability: B+
- Overall: B
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