I THINK MY BRAIN IS FULL

Last night I had the somewhat dubious fortune of watching Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto.

Before I get to that, let’s just have a little look at Melvin:

Oh man. He’s really lost it, hasn’t he? Anti-semitism. Drunk driving. Ridiculous beard. He’s starting to look a bit like an Ewok. His grizzly fur and mad eyes say it all: “I am insane and I need you to help me”.

Much like the Ewoks, Mel is fighting large robotic killing machines using only natural weapons. In his mind.

In fact, watching Apocalypto is quite reminiscent of the last hour of Return of the Jedi. The lush green rain forest of the Yucatan Peninsular somewhat resembles the dense forest of Endor. A peaceful people are upset by the arrival of a more advanced civilisation. People get killed with sticks and stones. And, just like the feeling you get when the Ewoks first appear on screen, you start wishing the end will come soon.

I can only describe Mel’s direction as heavy-handed. Actually, there are many ways I can describe it, but heavy-handed is the only polite way to put it. At times, the movie swings between a slap-stick comedy and an 80’s action film. In the final fourty minutes of the film, I actually thought I had fallen asleep and woken up to find my girlfriend watching First Blood. A bloke with bad hair was running through a forest. That much I was certain of. Apocalypto is Mel’s fourth film as Director. I would have thought he’d be a bit more competent by now.

Like Kevin Costner before him, Mel is one of those A-listers that thinks that, just because he’s been in a few movies and a bunch of women fancy him, he can do whatever the hell he wants. And I guess, to some degree, he can. The man has his own church, sugar tits, and he appears to be preaching. I haven’t seen his debut, The Man without A Face, but from what I know of it, it seems to be one of those “attractive man with a bit of latex disfigurement tries to throw the girlies off the scent by making himself a bit unattractive in order to gain credibility while pulling earnest expressions and succeeding in love” type of films. I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s rubbish, without seeing it. That’s how I roll.

I grudgingly saw Braveheart a few years ago. It was as I expected. Mel put on a terrible accent and pulled earnest expressions while succeeding in battle. In a kilt. I’m not a big kilts and swords epic fan, so it left me somewhat cold. Like Apocalypto, it made me think of Kevin Costner.

If you look at the two of them and their respective collection of movies, you’ll see that after years as lovable rogue types, they both went on to make large scale films about little people. Men destined for greatness, plucked from their lives by circumstance, to fulfill a higher purpose. Where Costner’s movies depict him as some last great beacon of virility, swell Mel’s offerings are leading me to believe that he actually sees himself as some sort of great historian.

Like The Man without a Face, I have not seen The Passion of the Christ. I have seen the opening twenty minutes and found my mind wandering and my attention drifting. I’ll admit, I gave up. By the time I’d come to see it, or at least, its opening, I’d already become very much aware of Mel’s run in with the Police and his very questionable opinions on various faiths. I’d seen the episodes of Family Guy and South Park that portrayed him as some sort of megalomaniacal lunatic with a trap-door jaw and mad eyes.

Though it appeared to be a very authentic production, I just couldn’t get past the thought that Mel was twirling his beard and cackling to himself in his trailer, thinking “People are going to love me. I am going to be held in the highest regard for my gift to cinema. And why? Because I’m going to use subtitles…”. Of course, using an old, obsolete language and subtitles instantly elevates your credibility. You can get away with a lot when people can’t understand the words being used on screen. It makes up for a lot of the performer’s shortcomings.

And by God, the performances in Apocalypto were poor. An encounter with a member of another tribe, early on in the film, left me twitching. In true Mel fashion, earnest expressions were pulled and lines delivered with the subtle nuances of a brick to the shin.

Don’t worry, I won’t spoil the ending for you. Mel has already done that. It essentially charts the last days of the Mayans, before the fleets of Conquistadors arrived to destroy their civilisation, from the perspective of a young tribesman. His tribe live deep in the forest, away from the construction-hungry temple builders. Simple folk, who rub leaves on their genitals for fertility.

When the village is destroyed by Mayan slave hunters, the hero of the piece, Jaguar Paw (played by Rudy Youngblood, the proud owner of a very symmetrical face and quite obviously Mel’s desired image of himself in this oafishly handled allegory of his struggle against Hollywood. Probably.) goes on the run. Repeatedly. He’s trying to get back to his heavily pregnant wife and cheeky-eyed child who he stuck down a hole during the sacking of his home.

From this point onwards, the film may as well have been stock footage of a marathon. While Mel’s cinematographer does a great job of holding the camera steady as Jaguar Paw and other similarly named folk run through the jungle, it feels like it’s completely lacking purpose. There is roughly twenty minutes worth of running and establishing shots of the rain forest that could be lost quite happily.

A lot of people have said that this is a gory film and, while there is a lot of blood seen, it’s done in a way that’s almost comical. The cartoonish spurting of blood looks like an anime scene which I am sad to say, I chuckled at. There is certainly a lot of violence in this film and it seems fitting to the situation, but it is again handled so heavy-handedly that it almost feels like it was shoe-horned in to give the film some sort of extra credibility, as though a higher certificate will elevate the rest of the content, as it’s an adult-oriented movie.

As my girlfriend so rightly pointed out during the film, Jaguar Paw’s nemesis in the film, Snake Ink (note the name Snake always seems to go to bad guys, with the possible exception of Snake Plisskin of Escape From New York - though he is a somewhat reformed bad guy), appears to have been based solely on Thumper from A Bug’s Life. You know the one. The angry cricket that can’t speak and just makes growling noises. This made the dynamic between the two of them almost laughable at points, and I couldn’t help but see Jaguar Paw as the affable ant with the slightly effeminate voice.

I will go as far as to say that this is quite an accomplished film. It looks good, in places. It is certainly a reasonable stab at a historical epic. However, with the knowledge that Mel Gibson is now a raving lunatic, it is hard to watch it without thinking it is the work of a mad man. With allegations of homophobia, anglophobia and anti-semitism to his name, coupled with obvious problems with the drink, Mel seems to be spiralling into the sort of mania that, I feel, Hollywood could do with more of. Sure, he’s crazy and he spouts a lot of bile… and, yes his films are quite ridiculous… and, well, his personal religious views are quite extreme… he seems to be blissfully incapable of holding his tongue and appears to be guided by some unseen force. I want to watch this man self-destruct in popular media. Preferably in easy to find youtube clips with reasonable quality sound.

It will happen. And we’ll get to hear all about it.