A Thinking Reed

Mel’s Mayan adventure

Written by

Lee M.

in

You have to hand it to Mel Gibson, he does his own thing. Here’s a look at his new project Apocalypto an “action epic about the ancient Maya” featuring “[h]undreds of local extras–many of whom have never seen a movie, let alone acted in one” and filmed in – yes – a language most viewers will never have even heard, much less understand.

Apocalypto, which Gibson loosely translates from the Greek as “a new beginning,” was inspired in large part by his work with the Mirador Basin Project, an effort to preserve a large swath of the Guatemalan rain forest and its Maya ruins. Gibson and his rookie cowriter on Apocalypto, Farhad Safinia, were captivated by the ancient Maya, one of the hemisphere’s first great civilizations, which reached its zenith about A.D. 600 in southern Mexico and northern Guatemala. The two began poring over Maya myths of creation and destruction, including the Popol Vuh, and research suggesting that ecological abuse and war-mongering were major contributors to the Maya’s sudden collapse, some 500 years before Europeans arrived in the Americas.

Those apocalyptic strains haunt Apocalypto, which takes place in an opulent but decaying Maya kingdom, whose leaders insist that if the gods are not appeased by more temples and human sacrifices, the crops will die. But the writers hope that the larger themes of decline will be a wake-up call. “The parallels between the environmental imbalance and corruption of values that doomed the Maya and what’s happening to our own civilization are eerie,” says Safinia. Gibson, who insists ideology matters less to him than stories of “penitential hardship” like his Oscar-winning Braveheart, puts it more bluntly: “The fearmongering we depict in this film reminds me a little of President Bush and his guys.”

Hmm – potshots at President Bush, saving the rainforest – I thought Mel was supposed to be Hollywood’s resident right-winger?

Anyway, I for one thought Gibson’s The Passion was an impressive and moving (though flawed) piece of work. I’m looking forward to this new flick.

Comments

8 responses to “Mel’s Mayan adventure”

  1. RC

    Who concluded in the 1st place that Mel was the resident right winger??? Just because he did a moving and fairly accurate telling of Jesus’ last days before his crucifixtion?

    –RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com

    Reply
  2. Eric Lee

    The charicaturization of Mel Gibson as a right winger was completely a media creation. When his movie came out, I think it was some months later that Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 came out, so people were polarized (by the media) into these two different groups. Surely these two people have nothing to do with each other!

    And then, there was a brief news piece about how Mel Gibson liked Michael Moore’s film and also couldn’t figure out why America was in Iraq, and then I must say I had a bit of fun watching some of the cognitive dissonance erupt over this at freerepublic.com (a place where those that comment are known as ‘freepers’).

    Thing is, as this snippet and others have shown, it was entirely an invention.

    Thanks for sharing.

    Peace,

    Eric

    p.s. I still haven’t seen Gibson’s Passion movie…

    Reply
  3. Lee

    RC – thanks for stopping by. In fairness, I think reports of Mel’s right-wingery also have something to do with his being an ultra-traditionalist (and maybe schismatic?) Catholic. But I could be wrong about that.

    Eric – Yeah, I think I remember that story about Moore and Gibson. There was this notion that it was “the Left” vs. “the Right” and they were both like “Hey, we liked each other’s movies!”

    I don’t think anyone should feel any special obligation to see Gibson’s Passion – I thought it was pretty distasteful how there was all that marketing tied in with churches and people treating it as though it was some kind of religious experience. I didn’t see it til a year after it came out.

    I do think, as I said, that it’s an impressive piece of filmmaking. They way he was able to tell the story visually was pretty amazing; the subtitles really were almost redundant. And I found it very moving – I’m not exactly a soft touch when it comes to movies, but I was in tears much of the time. Of course, it is gut-wrenchingly violent, but then so were the Matrix and Kill Bill (interestingly I recall reading an interview with Quenten Tarantino where he was going on about what a great movie he thought the Passion was).

    Reply
  4. Gaius

    I’ll go see it, too, if he includes subtitles in English.

    That worked fine in The Passion, I thought.

    Reply
  5. Joshie

    I still haven’t seen it, so I can’t speak to its emotional power, but what I’ve read about it and the parts I have seen have been wildly historically IN-accurate and over the top, gore-wise.

    Reply
  6. Joshie

    the passion I mean

    Reply
  7. Lee

    I don’t know if The Passion should necessarily be looked at as an attempt to create the most “historically accurate” telling of the story, despite the use of the ancient languages and whatnot. I think it’s much more a work of religious devotional art. This was the impression I got from, among other things, the appearance of the devil as a visible (well, at least to Jesus) character, the way certain scenes recreated certain iconic images from Catholic art, the use of the Stations of the Cross, etc.

    The goriest scene is the scourging which is also, in my opinion, the biggest dramatic misstep. The scourging is so awful that it makes the crucifixion itself seem almost anticlimactic.

    Reply
  8. jack perry

    Gibson’s reputation for being right-wing comes from his social conservatism and his association with the Catholic Traditionalists, at least in his disdain for the 1971 missal. I’ve heard a quote of his to the effect of, “I didn’t leave the Catholic Church, it left me.” More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Gibson#Quotes I’ve read that he had mass daily on the set of The Passion, and the Mass was according to the 1962 Missal (maybe earlier).

    In addition, his father is known to be a Holocaust denier, so there has been some guilt-by-association. And as we all know, Holocaust deniers are always right-wing…

    Reply

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