Apocalypto!

[sara[h]ng]

Yup. I saw it. (There are no spoilers in this post. Let me know if you want them. )I could say I was being a good school-minded kid taking an assignment and maybe I was. But really, I think that it just gives me an opportunity to rant about something I think is important.

Here it goes.

I recommend Apocalypto to anyone over a certain age - and by that, I mean maturity level, because I know teens that can better handle matters of substance than people my parents' age. It has gore. It has violence. And one, who has not seen the movie, might ask, 'why?' To answer that question, one must ask, what's the point of the movie in the first place? Because, really, the whole thing is a descriptive narration of terrible suffering.

In my opinion, the point is to make people realize, people who are comfortable in their stadium seating with cupholders filled with 44 ounces of sugar and who will go home in a few hours, to sleep warm and safe in their clean beds, with no fear that anyone could or will disturb them, unless it's the punk kid next door with his music too loud, to make these people realize the atrocities that have happened and are happening and will happen again. It is easy to forget that every person who receives injustice is someone's child. Someone's mother. Someone's closest friend.

I haven't ever cried in a theatre until tonight.

That being said, don't dare say, 'oh, yes, well, I understand that lesson, I don't need to see stuff like that.' And then go back about your usual business. Unless you are actively part of the solution right now, I don't want to hear it. We always think that we can't give our money to send aid or our time to write a furious letter to a congressman (or whatever the English equivalent is ) because of all that we have to deal with like our demanding jobs, car payments, house payments, etc. But we forget that we put ourselves into the positions we are in. No one forced us to buy that huge thing that's just a little bit above our means. Everyone has a choice to ignore the problems that exist today or to try and make a difference. And the first step to making a difference is to become aware.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox. The movie was well done. The language thing was actually pretty cool even though I'm not sure how much of a difference it would have made to have them all speaking English instead. The beginning starts a little weird, so bear with it if you go to see it. I remember trying to figure out why, of all possible jokes or methods to make the audience connect with the protagonists, Gibson chose what he did, and you know, I'm still not sure. The thing I loved about the movie was that there was no crap in there set to please the masses. There were zero stupid little catch phrases and at the end, when there was an obvious set-up for one, and I started to cringe, feeling the ruin of an otherwise excellent movie, relief! It was side-stepped. The actors are not all just gorgeous little idiots, but real people instead. Even the children are good actors. There's a whole lot of nakedness, but it's completely relevant and tastefully done - as is the violence, as I've already pointed out.

One more thing, there's an extremely cute (and angry!) jaguar kitten in one scene.

[flowperson]

Thank you Sara...your review was relevant and superb.

Maybe the point of the movie was to help us tealize that violence is and always has been pointless, but that at least today's usually involves emotional and psychological harm as opposed to overt bodily decimation in most instances. Which leaves us with the quandry of which is more damaging to Humanity over the long term ?

Your views expressed these matters quite well. Perhaps Gibson's work of art is a warning to us that it is still possible for us, as comfortable as we are, to descend into past states of being if we're not very careful as a global society. My opinion is that a collective disregard for life and innate ferocity is still in us, lurking just below the surface, and can emerge from time to time, when we least expect it, whenever it's evoked. IMO, it's the evokers who are at fault.

flow....

[17th Angel]

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Just going to put this here for a second... Whammy....

[wil]

Namaste, excellent review and contemplation...

Fall of an empire...an empire that was teetering...I think it a follow up to the passion, he probably felt he'd be under fire for producing and directing armegedon, so this said something very similar...without the backlash.