Word: mayan
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...Apocalypto,” Mel Gibson doesn’t try to persuade you to care 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...
...screaming, pillaging rape of a village takes the protagonist, Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), from a lush jungle to a stunningly depicted Mayan mecca and back again, as he tries to escape his death-happy captors. A prophecy foretells great and ominous things for him, but his most pressing thought is the rescue of his small son and very pregnant wife from the bottom of a well-cave combo where they were hiding during the sacking of their home. Luckily, nature, the fates, and his supernatural ability to rip arrows out of his torso conspire to help him thwart...
...world full of bewildering, bloody beauty stunning in its scope. Aesthetically, the movie is magic—gruesome, gory magic perhaps, but powerfully depicted nonetheless. The city scenes in particular are extraordinary. The headdresses alone are worth more than their own astounding weight in cinematic gold, and the epic Mayan pyramids have never looked so outrageously good, whether in spite of or because of the heads and bodies bouncing down their infinite steps...
...pierced and outfitted in jewelry ranging from precious stones to human bones, the actors and actresses that populate the screen do so beautifully, in particular the lead Rudy Youngblood. The casting, unconventional and far from stereotypical Hollywood, is impeccable, as is the decision to have the characters speaking a Mayan dialect (no worries, this, like “The Passion of the Christ,” has English subtitles). In English, the movie would be ludicrous, but in Mayan the alien words contribute to the recreation of this long gone world...