A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

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Title: Apocalypto

Date Viewed: 12/31/06

Details:

Rudy Youngblood

Dalia Hernandez

Raoul Trujillo

Bernardo Ruiz

Written, directed & produced by: Mel Gibson

Score: 0

The Review: In my younger days I was fascinated by the Maya, and upon reading (in the mid-1960's) Gallenkamp's book, turned my mind to composing a choral work which set the Popul Vuh to music. Dark, catastrophic, mystical -- "On that day, water will cover the earth..." -- the stuff of legend, and an odd sort of enjoyment for someone who must have been way too serious as a kid. The Mayans deserved their day in the (contemporary) sun, I thought, and prophesies of doom and downfall would make for great music. Needless to say, my infatuation with the Randall Thompson style of dramatic, over-orchestrated choral work never bore fruit, although I still thought occasionally about whether it might make a dark folk opera (*). But now, one would think that the need for me to deliver the myths and last days of the Maya from their historical obscurity has been lifted from my inartistic shoulders by no less than Mel Gibson. But one would be wrong.

Apocalypto is a disappointment, not because of lack of ambition but because of lack of delivery. It is basically very simple in plot, and but for a few cinematographic set ups and flourishes, is fairly simple in execution. Linearity might be a refreshing time-pattern to some, but here it's almost hum-drum. There's the typical three-act scenario: Rousseau-ian pastoral hunter-gatherer natives in their small village; the brutal slave raid and march to the intruder's city followed by a graphic demonstration of violence and ritualistic savagery; escape and a chase scene for perhaps the last third of the film. It's not that there's no motivation for escape -- it's established all too clearly, although the Yucatan geology is not entirely consistent with the protagonist's concerns -- and the audience clearly engages and sympathizes with the pursuit. The tribal culture clash is presented in highly polarized form, and while there's never any ambiguity or intellectual shelter offered to sadistic bullies and violent assault, there's also little relief or joy in accomplishment.

There's no date provided for the events in the film, although a form of deus ex machina materializes in the final minutes that offers some strong clues, although these clues are confusing and contradictory. The Classic Maya collapse has been dated from 760 to 910, depending on geography. But even the most extreme date offers a conflict between a live Mayan sacrificial culture with working pyramids, and the date offered by the vision of the end of the film. Perhaps this is merely extreme artistic license.

The movie's epigram is provided up-front, albeit misattributed and slightly misquoted, from the historian Ariel Durant: "a great civilization does not die from without unless it has killed itself from within." (The accurate quotation -- "a great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within" -- is part of Will and Ariel Durant's commentary on the Roman empire.) Considering the deus ex machina filmed by Gibson, the imputation of the epigram is causing a bit of a controversy in certain circles. However, a rather different deus ex machina is offered by Jared Diamond in his Collapse chapter covering the demise of the Maya. His analysis shows that, through a confluence of five different threads (population growth outstripping resources, effects of deforestation, increased internecine fighting, climate change and drought, and regal inattention), that by the time-frame of the film, there would have been nothing of the Classic Maya remaining but a few scattered villages. Indeed, when the invaders of the 1500's crossed the Yucatan on their treks north and westward, they nearly starved because of the lack of crops to plunder.

The score by Horner is nowhere near as good or evocative as his was for Braveheart, although the flute serenade over the closing credits is good.

Oh, by the way (and the trailers were carefully constructed as to "overlook" this fact), the entire dialog appears to be in a Quechuan dialect and is subtitled in English -- so much for the nuances of communication in the cinematic art form. Realism is one thing -- requiring the actors to act around a serious linguistic impediment (to enact the audience's understanding) is a bit much to expect. But at least it's a live language. (Aramaic anyone?)

(31-Dec-06)

(*) It was only when doing a bit of web-research for this review that I discovered that someone has indeed set the Popul Vuh to music. In 1975, Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra commissioned Alberto Ginastera to write an orchestral score. The composer died before the work was formally delivered, but it was eventually premiered in its more-or-less complete form at Carnegie Hall in April 1989.

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