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Thursday, May 21, 2015

Apocalypto

I have been wanting to watch this movie for a long time and finally watched it on blu-ray. Unfortunately I had to watch it in two sittings and the overall feeling is mixed on the movie. After watching the movie I wondered if Mel Gibson has a thing for suffering. Right from Braveheart we can see he elaborates the torture scenes with finesse which will make you shift uncomfortably in your seat.

This movie reminded me of The Passion of Christ as this movie brings on screen some really violent scenes. Leaving aside the violent scenes if we look for other things in Apocalypto it does has lot of other things to offer. If you ask me how will I describe it other than being violent I would go for the word haunting and creepy.

The movie is basically a revenge movie but the movie doesn't spend much time on the revenge part as it happens very quickly. We are not given that ultimate satisfaction of watching the hero avenging the enemies in elaborate fashion. Most part of the movie deals with the suffering of innocent people under some most violent people.

The haunting and creepy parts are the ones where we are shown human sacrifices happening one after another and people going crazy for each sacrifice as if they are under a spell. Mel Gibson always captures the fear excellently. He did it very nicely in "We were soldiers" and he does it here again as well. The first sacrifice happens quickly but he takes time to show the effect of that on the second person taken for sacrifice. The elaborate make ups add to the creepiness.


It is indeed an extrodinary effort to bring back the Mayan culture ofcourse no one can validate if there existed such a violent communities among them. But I do wonder why Mel spends all his efforts on such violent movies and not on some light movies.

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