Apocalypto pt. 4

I think Ben is proud of his ability to needle me about Apocalypto. So with goat got, I continue. Apocalypto starts off with a Will Durant quote—"a great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within." That's great, except the the film isn't about the decline of a civilization. The evil, heart-ripping, head-throwing Mayans simply serve as a backdrop for the capture and chase. Or is Gibson trying to tell us that the Mayans deserved to be colonized because they were responsible for their destruction "from within?"

This is where my mixed admiration for George Lucas shines through. You have to give Lucas credit for his vision, even when he overreaches. The Star Wars prequels try to show us how an empire becomes an empire. They look to Kurosawa as a model in their portrayal of human spectacle wrought large-scale and small. And even though they fail in that regard, you have to admire the films' ambition. I guess I don't react well when art tries to tell me that it's important. That's like grad student work. But I appreciate attempts to show us how things work and how things come to be. So Gibson uses the Durant quote to cloak his film in a sense of importance and the heightened documentary-style cinematography to convey a sense of realism. It's a film that wants to be more than the solidly-crafted entertainment that it is.