Apocalypto (Mel Gibson, 2006)

[exte]

What was your impression of Miami Vice then?

[Cinetwist]

Miami Vice was a good looking digital film. This was diabolical. Maybe I saw a shit print, but I doubt it, as it has only been out since Friday. I swear I've seen a different film.

[marty]

I thought Apocalypto was one the best digital transfers to print I have seen. It looked like film. Couldn't even tell it was on digital video. Whereas Borat was the worst. Before everyone goes on about that was the intention. That's fine but if I pay $15 for a ticket to see a movie in a cinema I expect it to be shot better than my two year-old's birthday video. There was more grain in Borat than a silo and it just looked atrocious. I cannot believe so many prints were made and screened of this film and people loved it. It looked worse than shit and it just bothered me so much, I hated the whole film because of it.

[Oedipax]

I also thought Apocalypto looked pretty flimsy. One thing that stuck out for me in particular was the opening action sequence - it nearly looked like interlaced video that had been (badly) converted to 24p! Nothing else in the movie stuck out as much as that sequence, but on the whole the visual aspect was for me pretty underwhelming. Not a good example of what can be accomplished these days with HD at least.

[Barmy]

I don't even know what interlaced video and 24p means. Maybe that's why I enjoyed Apocalypto and didn't stress out over the technical aspects. To my eyes it looked good.

[exte]

I also thought Apocalypto looked pretty flimsy. One thing that stuck out for me in particular was the opening action sequence - it nearly looked like interlaced video that had been (badly) converted to 24p! Nothing else in the movie stuck out as much as that sequence, but on the whole the visual aspect was for me pretty underwhelming. Not a good example of what can be accomplished these days with HD at least.

The opening sequence to my eyes was indeed shot interlaced, to give it that live, on the spot feeling. To me, it was definitely intentional, almost like National Geographic, as someone said, to give it that sense of immediacy. Once I saw it, though, I was afraid the whole film would look that way, but thankfully the rest was 24p, save for a shot or two at the end...

[The Invunche]

I don't even know what interlaced video and 24p means.

Interlaced

24p

[Joe Buck]

Well, I liked it. It's just an action picture. Popcorn flick. Die Hard in the jungle. Not really about the cinematography.......like complaining about the camera technique on "The Cannonball Run". Just enjoy the ride.

[Galen Young]

HA! I've just looked at the cinematographers filmography. The only precedent I could think for a film as ridiculously ridiculous and uncinematic as this was Waterworld. It turns out he shot that as well, along with a string of other classics.

Dean Semler also shot George Miller's Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior -- I consider that one to be a classic! Maybe that's why Mad Mel hired him for the job? It's certainly not in the same league as Malick/Lubezki -- but for what they managed to do on video, I thought it looked fine.

[exte]

I had a great time watching this flick. Once the protagonist started really running, the film was gold for me. I love it as a chase film. T2 was a chase film, and it was extraordinary. This wasn't so bad, either.

[Antoine Doinel]

I saw this tonight, but unlike some people who had complaints about the look of the movie, I had no idea it was shot digitally until I logged in here. I thought it looked great, though I agree the comparisons with Malick are a huge stretch.

As for the movie itself, it was pretty terrible. The main problem I had with this film, is the same problem I had with Passion Of The Christ. Mel's bloodlust and need to show every act of violence in excrutiating detail, diminishes whatever message (I'm sure there is something about empires done in by their own excess and taking their beliefs to another country somewhere in this mess) he is trying to put across. As the film goes on it's almost as if Mel keeps trying to up the ante on the grossout factor. The characters themselves are so poorly written as to be nonexistent. Whereas with POTC, essentially everyone knew the story of Jesus (which made the fact that he managed to snuff any emotion out of the film all the worse), here we learn very little about Jaguar Paw. I didn't particularly care for his plight and the film itself really just builds to its long, elaborate, inconceivable and boringly predictable chase sequence at the end. I enjoyed T2 as well, but at least it knew it was a fantasy.

I also could've done without the ridiculously and inconsequential running gag about a guy trying and failing to have a child with his wife at the beginning. But I did love the Midnight Cowboy reference with the same dialogue, but with a tree falling instead of a car.

[exte]

I'm not making accusations Antoine Doinel (or defending Gibson, for that matter, as I have still not seen Passion of the Christ), but I was wondering about your comments toward brutality and tragedy. Is it possible to tell this girl's story? Her story is the fourth one down...

Truly, in all its horror, on film? It's a horrendous story, and I can't imagine seeing anything like it on film being as honestly and vividly told as perhaps by someone who was actually there. So, is it possibly in this day in age? Without being called barbaric and cruel and overdoing it? I'm wondering what you think, really...

[Antoine Doinel]

I don't think film can accurately convey all the complexities of a real life tragedy in a way that the audience will every truly feel like they've gone through the event themselves. But that being said, I do think it does have the power at the very least, to temporarily have the audience share in the emotional experience.

I have nothing against painstakingly detailed violence, but when it's used in the absence of character development or emotional understanding, it simply becomes a technical exercise.

[colinr0380]

I have nothing against painstakingly detailed violence, but when it's used in the absence of character development or emotional understanding, it simply becomes a technical exercise.

It is interesting how violence, and the use of violent acts as a means to create a character has defined much of Gibson's work, even as an actor. Even as early as Mad Max you can see a character without a personality, except for those few elements placed to make the character sympathetic, find his calling in life through suffering and vengeance. In the Lethal Weapon films I got the impression violence was his entire life, and although it destroyed people close to him the character, in a masochistic way, needed it to give him a purpose in life, which contrasted with Danny Glover's character who just wants to get through whatever crisis they are facing and get home to his family.

The films he has made as a director just seem to have dropped the 'vengeance' element from their lead characters and involve the characters reaching an epiphany - for example through psychological suffering in Man Without A Face, when he is accused of an improper relationship with his pupil and ostracised by the community, but in a way becomes empowered as an individual through becoming a figure of hate. This moves to longer and more involved scenes of physical torture of an individual in Braveheart and Christ, to now applying the same principle to a whole society cannibalising itself through commiting many individual sacrifices rather than taking their time over the one 'ringleader'! It seems like a very individualistic point of view, of one person against society, but also has the sense that you have not 'earned' your individuality until you have been pilloried.

It also feels like a very masochistic attitude, and the message that I take, from Gibson's first three films at least, is that the individual is given affirmation in his acts through those who oppose them getting so upset they feel the need to take action against them. I could perhaps see Gibson's next film taking this idea a step further and moving into the territory of people who actively seek to be humiliated and destroyed by their society through behaving in a confrontational manner (although people might see his recent off set problems as an attempt to do this in real life! I would be interested to see how many others see his films as being more personal expressions rather than attempts at any sort of historical accuracy. They certainly seem much more interesting viewed in this way).

Either that or he could move in the other direction and look and produce other hellish views of the way individuals are crushed by the ideological constructs which they are born into. He seems much more interested in this, and tragic heroes, than in proposing any sort of way out of such oppression (perhaps he doesn't see one - except death?). I have found his films so far deeply pessimistic, with individual action noble but futile, in the sense of the the wider societies he depicts.

I forgot who said it but I remember someone talking of Apocalypto as being the big-budget version of those Italian cannibal films of the mid 70s to early 80s such as Man From Deep River, Jungle Holocaust (otherwise known as Last Cannibal World) and Eaten Alive. I think when I get to see the film I'll have those films in mind, along with the comments about it being a chase film, rather than looking for any historical accuracy. I am still interested in seeing what it is like though!

EDIT: Sorry I think I was going for some kind of record for most uses of the word 'individual' in a paragraph at one point there!

[Gordon]

Waterworld is one of the most beautifully photographed films I have ever seen.

I agree; Dean Semler is one of the best modern cinematographers.

[Antoine Doinel]

The films he has made as a director just seem to have dropped the 'vengeance' element from their lead characters and involve the characters reaching an epiphany - for example through psychological suffering in Man Without A Face, when he is accused of an improper relationship with his pupil and ostracised by the community, but in a way becomes empowered as an individual through becoming a figure of hate. This moves to longer and more involved scenes of physical torture of an individual in Braveheart and Christ, to now applying the same principle to a whole society cannibalising itself through commiting many individual sacrifices rather than taking their time over the one 'ringleader'! It seems like a very individualistic point of view, of one person against society, but also has the sense that you have not 'earned' your individuality until you have been pilloried.

I would even go further and say that in Gibson's films, the masculine ideal - as a leader, provider and role model - has to be earned by physical torture as well. In the end, his characters are celebrated more for what they have endured, not what they have accomplished.

I have found his films so far deeply pessimistic, with individual action noble but futile, in the sense of the the wider societies he depicts.

I had the same feeling watching Apocalypto - the middle section is unrelentingly grim, and the film's finale offers very little hope as well. Gibson does not seem to think that conflicting cultures can every truly reach an understanding or common ground. And I don't necessarily have a problem with that view point, but he doesn't provide much to sustain his argument.

[Roger_Thornhill]

I had heard so much about the horrific violence in this film that I tried to prepare myself before watching by bracing for a film that would make the flogging in Passion Of The Christ look like child's play. I'm not sure if I'm so desensitized to on screen violence or, as Antoine suggested, the lack of characterization made me care little for what happens to them, but the violence didn't startle me much.

One of the most disturbingly violent scenes for me in the last decade or so is Joe Pesci's death scene in Casino. I can't get it out of my mind, and how Scorsese somehow made Pesci's sociopathic character even slightly sympathetic is a testament to his strengths as a filmmaker.

Apocalypto's characters, in contrast, are so thinly sketched that I hardly minded when Jaguar Paw's buddies got their hearts ripped out or speared in the back. Now that's not to say I didn't like this film, I found it very engaging as an action film and I was surprised that I was somehow was able to divorce my personal revulsion of Gibson's antics enough to actually enjoy his new film, it's just that on an emotional level I wasn't very invested in Jaguar Paw's plight.

Spoiler

As I'm sure this has been mentioned, the very ending with the arrival of the Spanish ships drove me nuts from a historical point-of-view, however, then I thought of all the historical fallacies in Braveheart and got over it. In other words, I wasn't surprised.

I wonder what's next for Gibson, perhaps a Nero biopic in Latin? That should give Mel enough material for decadent orgies (although he might avoid sex considering his conservative religious beliefs), delightfully gory executions and murders, and enough Christian flagellation to satisfy the discriminating tastes of the Bible Belt.

[Barmy]

The American Society of Cinematographers has nominated the following 5 films:

Children Of Men
The Illusionist
The Good Shepherd
Apocalypto
The Black Dahlia

Admittedly, a few odd choices. But anyone who thinks Apocalypto doesn't look good should be crucified.

[Cinetwist]

It doesn't look good. Crucify me...

[Travis]

Rather, it's fuggin' ugly.

[colinr0380]

One of the most disturbingly violent scenes for me in the last decade or so is Joe Pesci's death scene in Casino. I can't get it out of my mind, and how Scorsese somehow made Pesci's sociopathic character even slightly sympathetic is a testament to his strengths as a filmmaker.

I agree with that. I think it is something about seeing another person being brutally killed, and not dying quickly, in front of you, knowing that you are about to have the same fate, and that there is no escape that makes that sequence so powerful. Added to that is the guy killed is (I think) Pesci's character's brother, and the idea that knowing what is about to happen doesn't prevent him from suffering through the same violence.

I'd also agree with your last point. All through the film I hated Pesci's character - ruining things, acting like an idiot - and I was actually looking forward to him getting his (richly deserved, I was thinking) comeuppance. Then I got what I wished for and it gave this teenager at the time a powerful lesson in how nobody deserves to be treated so badly, especially in such a brutal fashion, even if they are the worst scumbag alive!

I think compounding the brutal violence, and making the scene even more powerful, is the cutting off of Pesci's voiceover in mid-flow as he is hit the first time, and the brief shot of him alive as they begin to bury him (at least his brother is already dead at that point, it seems).

I think that beyond that sequence, though, the whole film is a masterpiece for getting us to understand and feel for people who are, in the end, deeply flawed and self destructive characters. (I wish Sharon Stone would get a role as good again!)

Sorry for going off topic, but Roger_Thornhill inspired me there!

[Darth Lavender]

Saw 'Apocalypto' today (haven't been to the cinema in a while, actually.)

A few thoughts;

Was the whole film shot in HD? I was pretty convinced that Gibson must have been alternating between film and digital depending on the requirements of the shot (to elaborate; some of the scenes clearly looked digital (albeit, high-quality digital,) others looked just like film and good film, too.)

A big thank-you to Mr. Gibson for all the brutality. Once the villagers started getting raped, tortured and mutilated, those chatty teens sitting behind me shut right up

[Barmy]

Actually, looking at IMDB, it appears this WAS shot on both film and video. So I take back all my comments that this is the first DV film that looks good.

DV sucks. Now and forever.

[Scharphedin2]

It would be interesting to hear how this really was filmed. There were a handful of scenes throughout the film (most notably the early hunting sequence noted above), where the use of DV was apparent. I had not considered the idea that this "real time" feel might have been a conscious aesthetic decision. In light of how strong the film's visual side is in general, the argument makes sense, although to me this image quality still detracts from the over-all impact in those scenes where it occurs.

In all other respects, I thought it was a wonderful film -- much more so than I had anticipated: A great adrenaline ride, illustrating a very simple and fundamental truth about cultures.

[exte]

Oh come on. When did a religious conversion not "cause work to go south"?

It's called Breaking the Waves.

May I also add Randall Wallace's Braveheart, though his conversion was probably much earlier...