More on "Apocalypto"

I saw the movie with a friend Saturday. We both saw Braveheart, Lord of the Rings and similar and can handle this level of violence in a great story.
We left the Theater exhausted and feeling beat up and even traumatized. I personally would not recommend this movie to friends or family. There is no debating the brilliance of Gibson as a filmmaker and he does graphically depict the descent of a culture into demonic madness. Those involved in the evil actions of the film are clearly obsessed and possessed by the forces that drive them. But the experience of total immersion in the drama and evil without any rest was harrowing.
I think the same positive messages found in this film could be communicated just as effectively without the total immersion of the senses for 2 hours in the dramatic violence depicted in this film despite the redeeming elements reviewers have mentioned.
I wonder if we are so desperate for Catholic/spiritual truth reflected in film that we excuse the excessive violence of this movie? Would we see it as acceptable in a movie about a period in history that reflected poorly on Christianity? Wouldn t we see that as excessive and manipulative? With that said, I do not favor treating tribal culture as some pre Christian Utopia. The truth is important. But the excessive violence is not necessary to reveal that truth and may have negative effects that distract from the overall message of the film.
Next movie for me the Nativity. I need to immerse myself in the One who crushed this Serpent.>

Face it, Rod, you're just dead wrong about this movie.>

Plus or minus a month or so, forty years ago as an eighteen year old in Viet Nam I wrote home to my mother my perception of what was wrong with the movies in America.

"They're not violent enough" I wrote. "When someone is shot they don't just grab their chest and then fall over. If the movies showed the real violence it would change the way people feel about war."

The first movie I watched when I got home was Bonnie and Clyde. There's a scene where they're in water and there's grey mud and blood. I left the theatre blown away emotionally right then. It took years before I sat down and watched the whole show.

I've since changed my perspective on violence in the movies. It's comparable to porn.

I was wrong about showing a more realistic rendition of violence changing the public's perception of war.

So I see gratuituous violence as unnecessary. Just like gratuituous sex on the screen is unnecessary.

Now when you can go to a theatre be encapsulated in a five sense aptmosphere where what's on the screen is real on all levels, I'll be interested. Because I believe in learning and being there is the best teacher.

So Rod you go to the movie. And as you're sitting there I'd like you to do a mental exercise for me. Compare the experience with going to a porn movie and experiencing that against what you've known with your wife. Would you be a better lover and a better husband because of your exposure to porn?

Yeah, you get the fuzzie wuzzies, but are you the better for it?>

I have another question - - what's a good classic book on the Mayans at the time that Europeans arrived? I'm interested in something readable. It might not be the last word in up-to-the-minute scholarship (which I would never finish). Prescott??>

"I'm going to steel myself against the violence, and try to see it over the next week or so."

You're too easy...>

Stefanie, I think you kind of missed the point. I was comparing violence in movies *in general* with pornography *in general*. I haven't seen this particular movie, so I haven't nothing to say about it; and I don't think anybody on this list said or implied that there was anything pornographic, in a sexual sense, in this movie. We were talking about violence vs. sexual pornography *in general*.>

Harvey,

On your comment on movie violence, in the documentary "this film is not yet rated" a director (I forget his name, sorry, he did the documentary Gunnar Palace about Iraq and fought to get a PG 13) makes a very interesting point. If movies show cartoonish violence (they use the example of that Arnold Movie where he was the spy married to Jamie Lee Curtis) you know tons of bullets, lots of people shot, yet no blood, it gets a PG or PG 13. But if you show real volence with consequences (think Saving Private Ryan) you get an R. He said it should be just the opposite, years of video games and movies with unrealistic violence is what desensitizes kids, it is only adults who should be able to understand that the Arnold movie is just a cartoon and that real violence is different.>

Rod: I saw the movie this afternoon. It is pretty violent, and maybe violent enough that you won't like it, but I didn't think it was any more so than a lot of movies. I'm guessing that if (1) the movie hadn't been done by Mel Gibson and (2) the bad guys had not been native Americans, you really wouldn't be hearing that much about how terrible the violence is.

Major Wooten: As Stephanie said, there's no reference to demons in the movie. The only incident that is at all supernatural is a prophecy uttered by a sick girl. The villains are brought down by their own (very human) vices.

There's some strong Catholic imagery in the film: in particular, I think that the inclusion of the full moon (however astronomically impossible in conjunction with a solar eclipse) is a deliberate reference both to the Mayan moon goddess and to the Blessed Virgin Mary. There's also pretty obvious baptismal imagery.

The acting was very good. I'm amazed that most of the cast had no prior experience. Gibson is an amazing director.

I'm guessing that Gibson really did have Bush and the war in Iraq in mind with this movie. The villains are brought down by three things: (1) their arrogant belief in their own invincibility, which leads them to overreach, (2) their fear, which leads them to do whatever it takes, including human sacrifice, to appease the gods and bring the rain (shades of the whole torture discussion), and (3) their thirst for vengeance, which keeps them pursuing Jaguar Paw further and further into the forest, even after several of their number have been killed. This just sounds too much to me like the criticism of the war that I've heard.

Although I think that a lot about the movie was well done, I haven't decided if I liked it or not. While I can put up with violence in movies, I don't find it entertaining, so if I like a violent movie, it's in spite of the violence, not because of it. While I don't think that Apocalypto was any more violent than a lot of other movies, the proportion of the movie that was given over to violence was pretty high. Most of the movie was taken up by the (long) attack on the village, the (long) slog of the captives back to the city, and the (long) chase scene through the forest. At some point during the chase, I found myself counting heads to see how many more people Gibson was going to have to kill off before it finally ended.

That's me. I'm not all that big on chase scenes.>

Anonymous was me. Sorry.>

I got the sense that this applied to the Spanish conquistadores at the end of the film as well. After all, Spain's empire collapsed too.

And doesn't that diseased girl prophesy the coming of the conquistadors in less-than-flattering terms, too?>

David J. White, IMO I would not call this movie "pornographic" in its depiction of violence. To me pornography implies pointlessness, no relationships, exploitative, fruitless, cruel for its own sake. That is not the case here, as I see it. Also, I don't think the sexual porn analogy fits here because there's no sex in the film at all (although a baby does get born, and that's really cool.)
Stefanie

Stefanie, did you ever see the movie "Affair to Remember" with Gary Grant and Deborah Kerr?

Do you believe the movie would have been better if they'd had more nudity?

The beauty of writing is it paints pictures without the benefit of graphic photography. That should be true with the movies too.

The last movie I saw in a theatre was Saving Private Ryan. The one scene that has stayed with me involved severe violence with minimum gore. I'll bet everyone who reads this and has seen the movie knows exactly the scene I'm referring to.

There's a difference between what stirs the senses and what stirs the mind and soul. Gratuituous violence or sex stirs the senses. Great writing and movie making digs deeper and grabs harder.

We deserve the latter and should demand it.

I doubt that Apacolypto fits in that category. In fact I'd bet on it.>