Thursday, December 14, 2006

Apocalypto of a film
















Rudy Ch. Garcia


Inez said...

thanks for the post--
I had planned on passing and this convinces me. Gibson's got some issues. He should figure them out OFF screen

msedano said...

interesting review. something i haven't seen in other reviews is your contrasting the scottish movie with the american one.

una pregunta: why are chicanas and chicanos all hot to trot over this movie, it's not like we have any proprietorship over this history, do we?

Manuel Ramos said...

Good question, Michael. Gente is excited to see the movie -- is it a hope that maybe some of the history will be corrected (which apparently did not happen)?

Anonymous said...

I think it's fucking heinous. Rudy, excellent review.

Anonymous said...

Well, actually, Gibson is mostly right. Tenochtitlan was indeed very clean and the conquistadores were mesmerized by the Aztec city. But there were less than impressed with Mayan cities and Mayan culture, such as ritual cannibalism and fascination with sacrifice and all-things-blood; priests used to skin people alive and wear their skin, in front of them. Let's not confuse Mayan and Aztec cultures. By the time of Cortez' arrival, the Aztecs were at their peak but the Mayans were already in serious decline. There are some incongruities in the murals (or other minute details) but let's not go nuts. The movie is accurate enough for its purpose. Let's just say it's not less accurate than any other "historical" movie out there. Mayans had some great scientific knowledge, especially in Astronomy, but so what? This is not a movie about the Mayan advances in science. It's a chase, end-of-civilization movie. When they filmed "the Godfather", should they have reminded us of all the great scientific inventions of Italian-Americans? Would that be relevant to the story-telling? Is the goal here to show the Mayan civilization in its best light, or to show what -most likely- the captured hero would see of it. Go see the movie, make up your own mind. Seems pretty accurate to me.

Anonymous said...

Dirt, filth, blood, violence,terror, decadence--that's a portrait of the chaos inside Mel Gibson's mind. It doesn't matter where he sets his movies, all he's really doing is projecting the incredible disturbance inside of himself onto the screen again and again. And it gets uglier with each picture--you have to wonder how he'll "top" this new one.

Anonymous said...

Hola I found a middle-aged white woman's comment interesting; "Why I loved it, of course it was phoney over the top, but the key story of survival was good, and so was seeing all those strong brown-skinned men" I say anyone (raza included)wanting a film dealing with Mayan people that is sensitive to the native culture should hunt down a DVD copy of "CHAC", does anyone have anything critical to say about CHAC: the Rain God was released in 1974, it was filmed in Chiapas by Chilean director Rolando Klein it's 94 min. color and LA Times said it was "Suspensful. hypnotic...lush, exotic beauty."