AmericanPapist Comments
A nice review. I actually just got back from the theater myself. Apocalypto was very entertaining, and (again) very violent. Some of the violence, I agree, was necessery, but some of it (The Jaguar Attack) I felt was definately not.
Thinking back, my favorite part was when the children were following the group of prisoners and got stufck on the bank of the river, unable to cross. The oldest girl called out that she would take good care of them... Very touching.
I wasn't analyzing the movie on a theological level, but more of a human dignity level... I agree with your comments here. I coulnt' help but think of our nation, a great nation, that is destroying itself by deciding who is worthy of life and who is worthy of death. I'm still putting my thoughts together on this though.
Good review.
Thank you.
I especially liked the part in the abandoning of the children scene where the one mother prayers for the intercession of a god to provide for the children. Very Mary-like, no?
Nice touch for a movie that premiered December 8th...
"It remains unclear in my mind exactly what fish Mel is out to fry in Apocalypto." [TNP]
I have had a strong suspicion about this, ever since I heard that Melvin Gibson was working on a movie concerning pre-European Mexicans.
I know next to nothing about this movie, since I have not read anything except what you have written -- and I read only the portion of your words before the "spoiler warning." So I do not know what how much is revealed (in this movie) concerning the coming of the Spaniards
But my strong suspicion -- all the more strong, now that I have noticed the release date -- is that there will be a sequel to this movie, a sequel that will tell the stories of (1) the Spanish conquest, (2) the appearances of Our Lady of Guadelupe, (3) the mass conversion of millions of indigenous Mexicans to Catholicism, and (4) the end of human sacrifice to pagan gods.
In other words, while the current movie is an entity unto itself, I think that it is just a "set-up" for what Gibson is trying to accomplish -- mass conversion of today's non-Catholics to Catholicism. (I believe that this was also one of his undisclosed goals in making "The Passion of the Christ.") It's too bad that he himself needs to convert to genuine Catholicism from his schismatic sect.
We are in the midst of December 8 (Solemnity of Immaculate Conception), December 9 (Memorial of St. Juan Diego), and December 12 (Feast of Our Lady of Guadelupe).
This movie does sound great, but a friend of mine saw it and was thrown off by the sheer number of historical errors. The main one being that the conquistadors arrived centuries after the collapse of the Mayans. Why the heck didn't Mel make this movie about the Aztecs, if he wanted to show the arrival of the Spanish at the end? The Aztecs were even bloodier. Or if he wanted to use the Mayans to show the decay of a civilization, why drag the Spaniards into it before their time? I am disappointed; a movie that takes the trouble to use all native actors and use an ancient tongue should get the basic historical framework right, too. If there's supposed to be some great future message about Catholicism to come, it will not be very effective if the history is bungled.
Time magazine's review said a lot of what you said AmericanPapist: namely that Mel Gibson's movie has a lot of Catholic Christian undertones.
Hi Hannah,
Your comment caught my attention and I just had to check out the dates.
I'm just a humble homeschool mommy but I've always asked my kids to please check out several sources for dates/info. about history/science pretty much anything. They are always shocked to see how off some texts can be; especially very current secular ones. So since all the kids are gone today I felt I'd be lazy not to check.
I've probably gone through at least 8 historical cycles with my kids so I felt a little bad that I hadn't felt the bungling of history.(I've only read about the movie and seen interview but I didn't feel a time shift) After checking about a dozen various resources in our home library I think Mel might be doing OK with his history. But possibly he's shifting emphasis or taking some other artistic liberty.
The very secular Eyewitness Anthologies "American Peoples"(1996) has this to say about the Aztecs, Incas and Mayans.
"When Cortes entered Mexico in 1519 and Pizarro arrived in Peru in 1532, they easilly overpowered resistance(they are talking about Aztecs and Incas)........The Mayans resisted until 1542, when Spanish established a capital at Merida."
I think the Mayan culture is usually focused on in early stages when it was in it's heyday. But even the children's section of our meager country libray has in depth books showing the Mayan empire in detail.
Many text books do not even mention Mayan culture in the sections about Spain and Portugal colonizing the new world. It doesn't mean it wasn't there. Like Greece and Rome there are many eras or periods to the Mayan civilization. There are Mayans right now that would take offense to the statement that they are collapsed. Are there any mesoamerican/south american scholars out here that can help.
Kingfisher's Illustrated History of the World(1993) lists these periods.
2000BC We know Mayans existed
499BC-500AD Mayans beginning an advanced civilization that would develop writing and astronomy
300AD Mayan classical period
800AD the Mayans emigrate to N. America
1191AD the second era of Mayan civilization begins
1200AD there is a north american indian revolt against the Mayans by the Hunac Reel
1460AD the end of the great age of the Mayan civilization
Susan Bauer says the following in her second volume of The Story of the World.
(talking about the Spanish and Portuguese)"Instead of making treaties with them, they marched into the cities of the Aztecs and Incas, and into the villages of the Mayans, and killed thousands of people".
Dianne, Hannah didn't say the Mayans didn't exist when the Spaniards arrived. She said the Spaniards didn't discover the Mayan empire until it was gone. Which is what I was taught in school.
The Spanish may have got to some Mayan villages, but the big Mayan cities were discovered centuries after the empire collapsed. Unless my History teacher had the Mayan cities mixed up with Machu Pichu (of the Incas)?
The Aztecs were very violent, but I suppose Mel didn't choose them because the Mayas were much more isolated. If he plans to do that sequel about the Lady of Guadalupe and mass conversions... well, that's Mexican stuff, and most Mayan territory today is Guatemala. I suppose there were mass conversions in Guatemala as well, but Mexico is much more Catholic. Then again, Mexico has some former Mayan territory... oh, never mind.
Thomas: thanks for taking time off your studying to watch the movie and write up a review on it. Such a sacrifice :)
Thanks Dianne for the info. I was going based on the general textbook knowledge and understandings of the collapse of the older Mayan civilization. Of course I did not mean the Maya up and vanished, but I think it's fair to discuss the fall of empires. The presence of people in Rome after the fall of the Roman Empire doesn't mean there should be films made with gladiators running about in the 12th century AD (not that I'm saying this movie goes that far...). That said, I did look up a few more things, and it seems I was wrong anyway; I have not got to read this book yet, but it does sound like there were some good size Mayan cities for the Spaniards to conquer!
http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?book..._id=3317%
203522
Hi Nutcrazical,
I'm not sure exactly what Hannah meant to say it just got me thinking.
Which was a good thing for me today because I needed a mental distraction from my work at hand.
I was fairly sure I'd learned that the largest number of identifiable Mayans alive today were in Mexico. Yes some are in guatamala too. i checked online with wikepedia? it confirmed that. But another might say guatamala.
I still don't know enough about the civilization and how much it changed over 5000 years to decide if I'd say it was collapsed at the time of the conquistadors as Hannah stated. The Spanish did find a Mayan empire(much changed from earlier ones) not just village people. The united Independent states(some sources call them dynasties) of Mayan people that the spaniards found resisted and fought them for almost 200 years.
They did have strongholds and cities. Info my cursorary research has brought up about these is sparse and it doesn't agree very much.
Our family of teachers, writers and artists think it's OK to change history if it makes a better story, painting etc. But not if it's a history class.I'm interested now to try and find out if I was wrong in assuming that Mel didn't say his story was factual history. Does anyone know. Now I feel compelled to find out the real history too.
I remind my kids to pray for Gibson whenever his bad behavior comes up in conversation. He really needs our prayers and his Pappa Benedict. Our church also needs passionate artists.
I'm very sad to say I doubt I'll see the movie on the big screen. So I'm glad for the review and info thanks.
"Human sacrifice. Violence against innocents. Slavery. Bloodsports. And pretty much everything else we’ve come to know as evil (and widespread) in pagan cultures"
Yeah, because none of that occurs in America or the Catholic ruled Dark Ages at all.
When was the last pagan started war? I mean real pagans, not Christians relabeled such because their bad behavior embarrasses you.
An excellent review. However there was for me one scene that you didn't mention that really struck me.
It's the scene in the jungle when the children are being told the myth of how man learned all things from the animals. I believe it was the owl who said that man will still not be happy because he saw a "hole in him". I couldn't help but think of Augustine's "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee...".
Indeed both hearts and holes figured prominently in the remainder of this incredible movie.
My dear hoodlum,
1) do we get to count the pagan war against the unborn? you wont accept that?
2) do we get to count the pagan nazis
oh you dont think they were pagan just because they called themselves pagans.
3) do we get to count the communists from Thomas of Munster to Stalin and Mao? No?
4) how about Pol Pot? Not pagan enuf?
You do well to deny the kinship since it is sooo unflattering.
Pad, show me the "pagan war against the unborn" and you can count it. From my experience, neo-pagans are divided on the issue.
2) You didn't get to count them because they weren't pagans. Some probably were, both as the interogation files on my desk show, some of them were Christians. Some of the Nazis most devoted allies were Christians.
3-4) Well, if they were pagan you could.
See, they were atheists. Atheists do not believe in any imaginary people, be they Jesus, Mohammed, or whatever pagans worship.
See, I deny paganism for the same reason you deny Islam, It is not real.
One thing this movie does a good job of showing is that no matter what happened under Spanish rule, it doesn't compare to what was occurring all over Central and South America before they even arrived. I'd take the savery or Inquisition of the Spanish over the slavery of the Mayans or Aztecs any day. There were major factions of Spanish (including Queen Isabel and most of the religious orders) and Portuguese who were adamantly opposed to enslaving the natives.
From Pad to you,
1) millions of unborn are killed every year. The premise of this situation in society is that
1) they are not human
2) they are not human enuf.
The greatest exponents of these theories are atheisits as you call them, but what exactly is a pagan then?... are you claiming that the sophisticated Roman pagans actually believed in Jupiter and Mars? They did not. The believed in a civil religion but not in the incredible stories surrounding these gods. Many indeed were agnostic or atheists. Perhaps you choose the term pagan in order to cloud the issue since the word has many different connotations - one of which is just non-believer.
Christians were not allies of the nazis. The nazis hated all organized religion. To claim that christians were allies belies a lack of acquatance with history. The greatest ally was Japan -hardly a christian nation. The nazis were atheistic/pagan from the beginning.
Your great talent is the abiity to see the world as though you were the creator of the world. Facts are not important because you can always reconstruct the facts to fit your own hypothesis. Argument becomes a parlor game because the object under consideration is always a moving target.
I think without doubt the parallel that is drawn in the movie is the idea that human life may be sacrificed by the powerful for the benefit of the powerful. It is hard to see the current situation of the unborn in any other light.
I recently finished reading Isabel Allende's "Ines of my Soul." It is a fictionalized account of the Conquistidors as they settled in Peru and more specifically in Chili. Her account, with a generalized bibiography has the Mayans as alive and very much fighting the newcomers.
Nonsense Pad, the Nazis got along great with multiple religious groups, like the Catholic Ustashi and Hlinka Guard, Orthodox Chetniks and Iron Guard. To believe otherwise is to be not acquianted with history.
I did like the movie, with its focus and impetus being this young man who simply wants to save his family. I also like the paralell use of language, using the same lines at the beginning and the end of the film, to tie it all together and show the continuity with the beautiful life portrayed at the beginning.
What did annoy me, however, was the sheer 'shortness' of the scope of the film. Sure, you got to see a glimpse of the big city and a glimpse of the Spainiards at the end, but the whole story only took three days, total. And Jaguar Paw got away with everything (except his father) while every other member of his tribe was left with nothing. I kept asking myself why this guy and these three days of his life were more important than the lives of all those around him. I didn't understand why his life was spared, why the prophesy was made about him, and why it was fulfilled in the center of the city, witnessed by everyone, yet it only affected those few people who were his original captors. Why?
Commenting by HaloScan
