Word: jaguars
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...about the fall of the Mayan empire. He’s more interested in painting the last bit of blood on that recently eviscerated human heart. The violence in “Apocalypto” seems obscene because Gibson does nothing to justify or contextualize it. The main character (Jaguar Paw, played by Rudy Youngblood) is motivated largely by the fear of having his skin peeled off, literally...
...movie tells the story of a peaceful 16th-century jungle-dweller named Jaguar Paw. The first quarter of the film presents his idyllic village as a kind of Eden. The second quarter is a vision of Hell, as a raiding party for the nearby Mayan empire torches the town, rapes the women and drags the men to the Mayan capital as featured guests at a monstrous and ongoing sacrifice to the gods. JP watches in horror as a priest has several of his friends spread-eagled on squat stone, then hacks out their still-beating hearts and displays them...
...perhaps he was right to have Jaguar Paw, having sampled the worst that the first civilization had to offer, take one look at the arrival of the second, and head back into the woods...
...Gibson has little use for the institutional Roman Catholic church, preferring a "less mainstream version of his faith." True, but the Traditionalists with whom Gibson is often associated are defined primarily by their objections to the liberalizations under the Second Vatican Council of 1962-5 - not an issue in Jaguar...
...Most interesting, however, was Mann's observation that if the boat Jaguar Paw sees is indeed the 1519 landing party of Cortes (who pushed quickly through what remained of Mayan territory on his way to the bloody battle of Tenochtitlan), the man holding up the cross was no particular friend to the indians. It was not until 1537, Mann said, that, after considerable debate both ways, Pope Paul III got around to proclaiming that "Indians themselves indeed are true men" and should not be "deprived of their liberty." In the intervening 18 years roughly a third of Mexico...