I am still baffled why Mel Gibson didn't get an oscar for this. 16
years later I am still moved by this movie although it's brutal.
It's a complete masterpiece; No one has ever done such a
movie.
I rewatched this movie today. Every scene, every experience makes me feel every heartbeat, every breath, every scream. I remember sitting there thinking was this historical movie about tribes and ancient rituals real. It's all based on Survival.The kind of story that reminds you how fragile, how raw, and how primal being human really is.
Here's my review on the movie.
It begins in the jungle, green, thick, alive. You can nearly feel it almost through the screen. There is our protagonist or main character Jaguar Paw along with his friends, all hunting a tapir, laughing, teasing, as young men in their tribe. So much light in that beginning--his pregnant wife, his son, his father with his wisdom. Life feels whole, simple. And as all good things do it breaks.
Once the invaders arrive, it is an open nightmare. Men, covered in paint and frenzy, raid their village, burning it down. Smoke clouds the air, babies are crying, people screaming, arrows flying--it is madness.
They kill, capture, destroy. You can find Jaguar Paw attempting to fight, but what could one man do with so many? He conceals his child and wife in deep hole, literally burying them beneath the ground, then he is led away in chains. And that moment? And then you get it, he is no longer fighting to stay alive. He is struggling to reunite with them.
The prisoners are taken into the forests and Mel Gibson does not restrain himself. You can feel each cut, each bruise, each blistered footstep.
They are marched to this great city of fear and blood, where human lives are sacrificed in the sweltering sun in as much as their gods are pleased. It is terrible--the heart of men hacked out, bodies thrown down the steps, the people applauding like it is a celebration.
And there, at the center of it all, is Jaguar Paw, painted with dirt and blood, and glaring into the eyes of death. But luck- or better still, fortune- spares him. There is a sudden eclipse which makes the sky black and the priests are frightened and he is taken off to be killed in some other place. It is then that the actual film commences.
Because Apocalypto isn’t about dying—it’s about refusing to. The chase that follows is one of the most intense sequences I’ve ever seen. Jaguar Paw runs. Through forests, across rivers, through mud and blood and pain, with death on his heels.
The way the camera moves—it’s so close you can hear his heartbeat, his breath, the pounding of his feet against the ground. He’s not just escaping; he’s transforming. He goes from prey to predator, from man to myth.
I have one scene in my mind that is seared by the flame and you realize that he sets a trap and turns around and you see the fear sides of it. The hunters are turned to be the hunted. It is savage and lyric and frightening at the same time. You can almost hear the jungle itself applauding him.
All the branches, all the shadows, all the drops of rain turn into an ally. And all through it all there is this desperation that is set up: his wife and child are still in there, the rain is beating and the hole is filling with water. It is not survival only, but it is a race against time.
By the time he returns, the strain is overwhelming. His wife is clinging onto just a thread, holding their baby over surging water, her eyes mad with hope and fear. And when you think it is all over, when you think perhaps, at last, they will be safe, the invaders come after them. the last pursuit empties on the beach and you find yourself suddenly, in the mist, seeing transports--Spanish transports--at anchor. Cross-bearing and armor-clad strange men emerge and you understand that everything that has passed has been merely a precursor of a storm of greater size. The experience of death has made Jaguar Paw look like death itself: he has survived to witness the birth of another type of devastation.
And instead of turning to them he turns back into the woods--with his family, with his life will that remained. Since it is not his to comprehend what is left of the world; it is his to survive.
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