A Movie.

Ok, a few weeks ago I was about to post something about the movie Apocalypto I had just seen. But I wanted to check what the reviews were on the movie before I wrote a review myself. I ended up finding a slew of stuff slamming the movie with ridiculous nitpicking and accusations while at the same time missing the obvious flaws and majors goods. I felt compelled to address all of this and pretty soon overwelmed myself and didn't post anything. I'm going to try again and this time I'll keep it simple.

First off, the basics. The movie, made by the now infamous, Mel Gibson, is about the Mayans and human sacrifice. The thesis was to show how human sacrifice was likely one of the key causes of the downfall of the Mayan civilization. It tracks a would Mayan sacrifice victems escape from sacrifice and flight to freedom. It grabbed my attention from the start and held it. It was very exiting, very gory, very suspensful, and a little raunchy at parts.

The Mayan civilization is portrayed as violence obsessed and corrupt. Their entire civilization is dying fallen victem to famine and plague while they attempt to ward off disaster by appealing to the god's (mainly the sun god) through human sacrifice. They hunt through the outlying villages and kidnap populations which they then sacrifice through the removal of hearts and decapitation. The mass graves resulting from the sacrifices were the cause of the famine and plague. Throughout the movie there is discussion of a prophecy or something similar fortelling the fall the Mayans. The movie ends with a vision of the Spanish arriving in the new world heralding in change and an appearent fullfilment of said prophecy.

Most of the people complained about the negative portrayal of the Mayans in the movie. They complained that the Mayans were an advanced people with an advanced calander and that there is no evidence of mass sacrifices or corruption, or famine, or cruelty, etc. Unfortunately, there's no evidence to the contrary either. The downfall of the Mayans is a mystery and no one really knows what happened. Most of their writtings are lost. All that is left are huge temples, some architectural art and murals, and their impeccable calander. This calander is often cited as evidence that the Mayans were 'advanced' (whatever that means) and thus incapable of such things as mass sacrifice. However, the Nazis possessed some of the most advanced tech in the world but they still massacred the Jews during the Holocaust. Technology is not necessarily a sign of civilization. So in short, because nobody really knows what happed to the Mayans, it's not a stretch to imagine that it happened this way. Eitherway, is is known that the Mayans sacrificed people the way protrayed at least to some extent. So I don't think that Mr. Gibson is necessarily wrong here.

The second thing people complained about was that use of the solar eclipse in the movie to impress the Mayans and frighten them was an inaccurate cliche of Messoamericans used to make them appear stupid and uneducated. This is a cliche and it annoyed me somewhat too. I believe that the first use of this cliche was not in reference to a Messoamerican civilization but to medieval Europeans in the book A Conneticut Yankee in King Aurthor's Court where it was meant to make the (Catholic) medievals look stupid and ignorant. It's attribution to Messoamericans is not illogical because they did worship the sun. However, we know that the Mayans were able to predict eclipses and so they would not have been surprised at them. So it would seem that eclipses could not have caused the stir that they did. However (again), a probable reason (I think) that the Mayans learned to predict eclipses was because they worshipped the sun and such eclipses did frighten them. If the eclipse was central to their religion it is highly likely that they would learn to predict them. So it is not unfeasable that the Mayans would be greatly affected by the eclipse, only that they would be surprised. Then again, some of the Mayans in the movie didn't appear very surprised. Those priests seemed to be ready for it. Perhaps only the priests knew how to predict the eclipses and they used this knowledge to control the people? I've seen this explaination in other reviews and it seems sufficient to me. It's still a cliche (I saw it coming way ahead of time), but not necessarily inaccurate and it definately helped the plot move along.

Most of the rest of the complaints were kind of nitpicky. For example, that very few of the actors were actually Mayan and that many were Mexicans, North American Indians, South American Indians, etc... Oh please, I wonder how many of those 'Greeks' in Troy were actually 'Greek,' or how many of those 'Italians' in Amadeus were 'Italian?' If Natalie Wood can pass for a Puerto Rican in Westside Story Mel Gibson can employ a few Mexicans and pretend they're Mayans. There is a such thing as suspension of disbelief, especially when the cast calls for dozens, if not hundreds, of Mayans, a race of whom there are few left and who live in country not known for it's acting venues. Similarly with the pronunciation of Mayan, which people also complain about. It's a language that very few people speak and if we can tolorate Julia Roberts in Micheal Collins or Harrison Ford in K-19:Widowmaker (Both of which feature Liam Neeson, hmmm...) we can tolate the mispronunciation of a language that none of the actors speak. The same also with the inconsistency of the timeperiod of the art, movies have traditionally gotten this wrong, so why should we complain here?

Now for my complaint, which everybody seemed to miss. The Mayan civilization as pictured collapsed 4 centuries before the first Spaniards ever reached America. That's right, there is no way on God's green earth that Spaniards could have come to end the Mayan civilization. It was already gone when they arrived. End of deal. Major historical inaccuracy destroys most of the movie. What more is there to complain about?

This is not to say that I didn't appreciate the semi-positive portrayal of the Spanish arrival in Messoamerica. After movies like El Dorado where the Spanish are presented as bloodthirsty, gold-hungary, sociopaths, this was a relief. Many people seem to have this notion that it's a new 'revelation' that the Spanish came to America for gold and not for God. Not only is this view not new but very old, but it isn't entirely correct. The Spanish were out for discovery. They wanted to expand their influence and create new trade routes. In the process they hoped to spread their faith and to become wealthier in both knowledge and matter. When it became known that the inhabitants of the Carribean were largely undeveloped indiginants, many of whom practiced canibalism, the Spanish Governement adopted a policy of conquest and assimilation, a policy that has been pretty normal throughout history. The people of America, whether they liked it or not, were declaired Spanish citizens. For the most part, this conquest did not involve torturing natives and asking where their gold was. This did happen but it was the exception, rather than the norm. Our current image of the sociapath Spaniard comes from Elizabethan England when war and bad relations between England and Spain lead to the widespread acceptance amongst the English of any negative proganda against Spain. With regard to the New World and the Americas, the highly exadgerated account of the Spainsh activist, Bartolomé de las Casas, who protrayed examples of unseamly torture and ridiculous sadism on the part of the Spanish. This picture completely ignored that hundreds of real heroes among the Spanish (mainly religious) who really did champion the rights of the natives of America. These negative images entered the textbooks and legitamized an extremely negative portrayal of the Spanish that has been far more damaging in the long run than any negative portrayal of the Mayans. Although the Spanish rule over the Mayans was hardly virtuous and rarely benevolent, they were not the sadistic, gold-hungry monsters often portrayed. To say that they came for gold and not for God is by far an oversimplification.

That said, Mr. Gibson would have done far better to feature the Aztecs as opposed to the Mayans in this movie. First of all, the Spanish actually did overthrow the Aztec empire and a picture of them as a herald of change for the Aztecs would have been quite accurate. Also, the Aztec practice of human sacrifice is far better documented than the Mayan and we do know that they practiced in mass similar to the image in the movie. In addition, considering that it only took Hernando Cortez less that 3,000 men and less than a year to conquer the entire Aztec empire of hundreds of thousands of people, it would not be farfetched to say that weakness, decadence, and political instability due to the Aztec practice of human sacrifice was largely the cause of their downfall. All in all, it would have made more sense and probably would have recieved less criticism.

Wow. What a rant.

In addition-

-The special effects were transparent.
-The first few minutes were rather raunchy but did establish the characters well.
-The Mayan warchief was probably one of the coolest villains I've seen in a long time.
-Mel Gibson does focus way to much on gore. It's no secret that he has a fixation.
-The protagonist recieves a deep stab wound to the stomach. After a day and a half of constant running it is fully healed. Thus stretched my credulity a little too far.

And that's what I think of that movie.
Next week: The Good Sheperd Ahhh.

God Bless.