More on "Apocalypto"

OK, two bloggers whose opinions on most anything I take seriously have seen "Apocalypto," and really liked it. Here's an excerpt from Daniel Larison's review:

Another one of these points, and this is the moral of the story, is pretty clearly that of hubris calling down nemesis. This is hubris in both its senses of violence and arrogance, which invites the downfall of those who try to raise themselves up too high or who believe about themselves that, as the bloody priest claims, “we are a people of destiny, we are masters of time.” Whom the gods would destroy, they first make insufferably self-important. These words do not necessarily echo (and indict) any particular leader, any particular elite or any particular civilisation (though it is a timeless message and one that all would do well to heed), but rather the tendency of every ruler, every people and every civilisation in its time to claim the mantle of the predestined, the chosen, the invincible, History’s favourites for whom the rules are different and to whom the normal course of history, change and decay does not apply. The perfect irony of the priest’s declaration to be one of the masters of time on the eve of his civilisation’s fall seems to have been somewhat lost on many of the critics. If we cannot see how this lesson relates to us or how we can make use of it, we really are in trouble. If the audience forgets or overlooks this part of the film, I think they have pretty much missed what Gibson is trying to say.

Larison goes on to say that:

all the critics have done Apocalypto a grave disservice in their emphasis on its supposedly overwhelming violence. This aspect of the film has been talked up so much that it almost convinced me, sight unseen, to not see it because the way people were describing it I came away with the impression that this was going to be something like the Chichen Itza Chainsaw Massacre. It was nothing like that, and not anywhere even close.

Oh really? Maybe I should reconsider my decision not to see it, especially given Larison's judgment that the film "is, in its way, the greatest anti-statist movie of the last ten years."

Stuart Buck liked it too, and he later approvingly sent me a link to a glowing review by the Catholic blogger Bill Cork, who observed:

But while Mel never says it, he knows, and hopes we know, that the aid that these children will get will come not from a merciful mother moon, but from a merciful Mother who stands on the moon; whose son is not a returning Mayan god but the Son of the Most High God. This is a movie about the destruction of an evil society, from within--and from without. It is a movie about fear and hopelessness--but also of hope, and a new beginning, heralded by the arrival at the end of ships bearing on their sails a sign of contradiction, of death and new life. As survivors of a harrowing chase stand on the sea shore, boats come toward them, bearing the men who will be instruments in the creation of that new world, through the preaching of the cross.

But this new world is not created through external salvation alone--grace perfects nature. Gibson has a Catholic sensibility. There is good in this world that is worth preserving. There is evil, but there is innocence. The new civilization that will arise will not be a mere subjugation of the old, or a replacement by what is new, but a blending of the two to create a new reality.

It is no accident that this movie was released on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, the day before the feast of St. Juan Diego, and days before the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The film ends with the coming of the Spanish conquistadores, who would in time work to crush the savage Indian religion. One professor is furious about the way the Mayans' faith was depicted as insanely violent, even though it was:

We have evidence to suggest that there were group sacrifices. But it would probably have been done as a pious act with solemnity. Some of it was probably public spectacle.

And we are to mourn the passing of this blood-soaked evil because...? Whatever evil they worked in their time, thank God that the Spanish came, and opened the way for Our Lady of Guadalupe to convert the nation. Anyway, Daniel and Stuart have me rethinking seeing the film. I was startled, in a good way, by this passage from Seattle newspaper review William Arnold, quoted by Larison. Arnold writes:

But this is not at all apparent from the movie. What is apparent is that the movie is an all-out attack on tribal culture, which Hollywood has idealized throughout its history and made a fetish in the era of political correctness.

I’m not sure how conscious this is on Gibson’s part. It’s likely not a position he has carefully thought out. In many ways, this is the work of an angry, unstable, self-destructive artist guided by pure instinct: a Modigliani or Van Gogh painting on a $100 million canvas.

But his movie definitely is telling us that tribal sensibility, which films like “Dances With Wolves” celebrate so nostalgically, actually is primitive and backward; and its resurgence in Africa and the Middle East is causing all the problems in our world.

In the climax of “Apocalypto,” when signs appear that the white man and his Christian civilization are coming, we feel relief. That relief flies in the face of everything the movies have taught us since the ’60s, and no one but Gibson would have dared try to induce it.

Daniel, who hadn't seen the movie when he penned these lines, said:

It is not, I am guessing, a simple story of savage natives destroying themselves, only to be delivered by the white man–in fact, I am doubtful that the conclusion is meant to be a relief. It is probably intended as judgement, a confirmation of the Durant quote cited at the beginning about the collapse of civilisations, and proof that the mayhem you have been watching for the past two hours has had the consequences of distracting everyone from real dangers by focusing on phantoms and illusions and seeking false solutions through an orgy of violent bloodletting. (What could the movie be referring to, I wonder?)

OK, OK, enough of me quoting what other people have to say about the movie. I'm going to steel myself against the violence, and try to see it over the next week or so.