DeMille, Move Over for De Mel

Wow, an edge-of-your-seat action movie, a quintessential `guy movie’ with a lot of emotion to boot! And all the spectacle and lavish detail that we used to associate with the legendary Cecil B. DeMille! Very impressive, Mel!

As you probably know, the story is set among the Maya Indians of Mexico and central America, just at the time of the arrival of the Spanish following in Columbus’s wake. A peaceful village of hunters is raided by the Maya of the city, who march the villagers away, selling the women as slaves and sacrificing the men to their gods (and leaving the poor children to fend for themselves, one of the more heart-wrenching aspects of the film). The film’s main character is Jaguar Paw, a young man devoted to his father, his very pregnant wife, and his small son. When the raiders arrive, he manages to hide his wife and son away, but his father is killed before his very eyes, and he is led away with the others to the city, where a priest at the top of an imposing pyramid cuts the men’s hearts out, beheads them, and shoves their bodies down the steps, to the delight of the city-dwellers. Jaguar Paw is just about to go under the knife when a solar eclipse brings the grisly ritual to a halt. But he is not out of harm’s way, as the city warriors decide to use the captives as target practice, most of them being killed in the process. But Jaguar Paw manages to elude them, taking to the jungle as he hurries home to find his wife and son.

For a little over two hours, the movie immerses us in an exotic world. The people speak Maya, so subtitles are required. As in his Passion of the Christ, Gibson chooses to open the film with no credits (other than the film company logo), so we are immediately plunged into this strange time and place, where the designers spared no pains in giving us an authentic look at the customs, clothing, and hair styles of these people (including the intricate tattoos, scarring, and body-distorting jewelry). The Maya city is awesome, with its hundreds of extras caught up joyously in the horrifying ritual slaughter. (We can imagine DeMille looking down from heaven and saying, “Now THAT is the way to make a movie!”) The violence is painfully graphic—like the Aztecs, the Maya made a spectacle of cutting the hearts out of their victims and holding them aloft, to the great delight of the people. The heads of victims are displayed on poles, and after Jaguar Paw makes his escapes, he has to tread through fields of decomposing bodies. While much of the scenery is beautiful—the lush jungle, waterfalls, the city—what takes place is gut-wrenching, not only the constant threat of human predators, but also venomous vipers and charging jaguars. (There is a brief glimpse of an adorable jaguar cub—then cut to its bloodthirsty mother nearby.)

And yet, with all the bloodshed and action, this is a movie with heart. Jaguar Paw is not only a sturdy (and smart) action here, but an emotional man who loves his father and can’t for a moment take his mind off his wife and son (who endure their own agony waiting in their hidey-hole). He watches as his captors kill one after another of his friends, and in the course of the film his face registers just about every emotion possible. We want desperately for this man to escape and find some peace with his wife and son (and the unborn one, which is born in one of the most bizarre scenes in the movie, though I won’t spoil that for you).

I suspect the movie may offend some people, such as PETA members who will object to the opening scene of the village men hunting down a tapir (a piglike jungle beast) or to the warriors killing the mother jaguar. Also, the movie gives a Politically Incorrect (but historically accurate) view of native Americans, who are assuredly NOT living in peace and harmony together, and who sold each other as slaves and practiced a religion of human sacrifice. In fact, the movie ends with the sight of Spanish ships on the coast—an event the PC crowd would lament, but then, after watching the natives slaughter each other for 2 hours, we wonder how much worse the Europeans could make things. (The fact that the Europeans ended the human sacrifices is, let us admit, a good thing.)

The actors in the cast are all unknowns (to Americans, anyway), which is good, since we almost feel we are watching a documentary. Gibson used lots of Mexican locals as extras, and they are refreshingly real in front of the camera. One standout is a small girl, whose village has been destroyed by the raiders, who utters an eerie prophecy of doom for them. Something in her eyes unsettles the warriors, who seem to be both superstitious and guilty. It is one of the creepiest scenes in the film, one of many which bring home the reality of the human tool taken by these raiding expeditions. In another scene, one of the village men about to be sacrificed watches as his old mother-in-law is put on the auction block—no one buys her, so she is simply cast off, nowhere and no one to turn to in a strange place, her daughter dead, her son-in-law about to be killed. We remember an earlier scene where she appeared to be a thorn in his side and are rather touched as she touches his shoulder as he is being led to death—she and he no longer at odds, but partners in suffering.

As I watched this film, I was aware of getting much more emotionally involved in this than in the typical Die Hard or Terminator type of movie, with a high body count. There is a high body count here also, but we get more of a feel of loss, as the people who are killed and injured aren’t just one-dimensional human targets but people whose deaths matter.

Way to go, Mel!