Movie review by Greg Carlson

Stephen Frears’ “The Queen” dramatizes the short span of time between the surreal death of Princess Diana and the even more surreal outpouring of grief that culminated in her memorable funeral. Perfectly blending documentary footage with the performances of a circle of thespians more than up to the task of playing familiar public figures, “The Queen” offers viewers a delicious, if fancifully speculative, glimpse behind the royal curtain. The movie principally toggles between freshly elected PM Tony Blair’s adroit handling of the crisis and the seemingly brittle stoicism offered by Queen Elizabeth and her kin.

The screenplay, by Peter Morgan, is almost entirely sharp, clever, and engrossing. What at first seems like a simple struggle of wills between tradition and modernization blossoms into a thoughtful examination of the meaning of public service, as both Blair and Elizabeth learn a great deal from each other over the course of the ordeal. Frears bookends the movie with a pair of face to face meetings between the two characters, interspersing the remainder of the running time with a handful of exquisitely strained telephone exchanges. Just when it seems that Blair might be spinning opinion away from the royal family in his own favor, he demonstrates an almost uncanny level of sympathy for Elizabeth and her exasperating behavior following Diana’s death.

As Elizabeth, Helen Mirren delivers a top-notch performance. Smoothly avoiding the traps of playing a well-known person merely as a satirical caricature, Mirren manages to strike a perfect balance between the monarch’s icy remove and her genuine belief that she has been called upon by God to serve the people of her country. Because we are allowed to spend so much time with the ruler and her family behind closed doors, Mirren takes advantage of the terrific opportunity to humanize the iconic figure. Who would have imagined the sight of Elizabeth piloting an SUV over the bumpy roads of her Balmoral Castle estate in search of the hunting party made up of her husband, son, and grandsons?

Beyond the queen, the other members of the House of Windsor are depicted in less flattering terms. Elizabeth’s consort, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, is played by American James Cromwell as a nasty, elitist snob. Son Charles (Alex Jennings) fares better than his father, calling for, and sometimes receiving, all kinds of disruptions to protocol during the planning of Diana’s memorial. The Queen Mother (Sylvia Syms) provides the lion’s share of comic relief, frowning with displeasure that the funeral arrangements she so carefully designed for herself might be appropriated for Diana.

Fans of political drama should be delighted with the juicy, imaginatively conjured hustle and bustle that attends life with her majesty, as a great deal of attention is paid to the minutiae of how one is supposed to interact with the queen. The real source footage, which includes several snippets of interviews with Diana herself, recalls the young woman’s magnetism and grace, making it that much easier to understand Elizabeth’s unspoken jealousy at Diana’s immense popularity.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Kelly Reichardt’s “Old Joy” is a wispy but mostly well-observed rumination that contrasts the life paths of two friends who have grown apart. Essentially an “anti-buddy” movie, Reichardt’s film intends to accomplish a great deal in the margins of its frames and the silences on its soundtrack. Some moviegoers will connect with the tension between the responsibilities of settling down and the romantic allure of living to the beat of one’s own drum, while others will find the rapport between the central characters alienating and off-putting. “Old Joy” has as many flaws as it does charms, and to its great credit, a spare running time prevents it from wearing out its welcome.

Soon-to-be-father Mark (Daniel London) somewhat reluctantly agrees to accompany pal Kurt (Will Oldham) on a quickie camping trip to the Bagby Hot Springs in Oregon. Seeking approval from his scowling wife, Mark embarks anyway, and his lazy drive to fetch Kurt, underscored by Air America broadcasts on the radio, sets the movie’s minimalist tone. Once onboard, Kurt babbles about recent travels that have expanded his mind, trying to convince himself as much as his companion that drum circles and bonfire jumping have salved his spirit.

Reichardt, adapting the screenplay with Jonathan Raymond from his short story, easily sketches the sense of fleeting youth through beautifully composed shots from the windows of Mark’s Volvo station wagon. Anyone who has ever sought retreat by means of a road trip into the wilderness will recognize the diners and gas stations that appear between the stretches of woods as the city turns into the country. Predictably, Mark and Kurt cannot initially find the place they’re seeking, but once they do, Reichardt constructs a potent scene at the hot springs. Kurt shares the story that provides the movie with its title as Mark sits quietly nearby. A moment passes between the two friends that ripples with an uneasy acknowledgment of something Reichardt purposefully leaves up to the viewer to determine. It is the film’s strangest, saddest passage.

“Old Joy” doesn’t comment more authoritatively on the dropout/contributing citizen divide than Richard Linklater’s superior “Slacker,” a much stronger movie that covers a great deal of the same ground. “Old Joy” bypasses the self-deprecating humor of “Slacker,” and as a result, a blanket of melancholy settles over practically everything that Mark and Kurt experience together. Certainly, Reichardt purposefully withholds all kinds of explicit information about the sorts of things that have passed between the two men, but her reticence tends to generate the kind of frustration that comes from someone who refuses to share a secret, choosing instead to taunt and tease.

While neither of the central characters is thoroughly drawn, the performers manage to create familiar, recognizable types. As the more loquacious Kurt, Oldham strikes a neat balance between tiresome palaver and warm insight. Masking his neediness behind a façade of easygoing cool, Oldham delivers the sadness necessary to make the audience occasionally experience the depths of Kurt’s regret and uncertainty. Reichardt’s final shots of Kurt are the most haunting images in the movie. Despite his copious indie credibility, however, Oldham remains a more accomplished musician than a movie actor, although his presence is one of the joys of “Old Joy.”

Movie review by Greg Carlson

In the opening scene of Pedro Almodovar’s “Volver,” a group of women tends to cemetery plots, scrubbing and polishing the memorials of departed loved ones. While a strong wind makes these dutiful acts rather challenging, Almodovar quickly sketches one of his movie’s central themes: how the living think about and relate to the dead. “Volver” is hardly a morbid movie, however, and despite some of its extraordinary plot points, it emerges as one of the great filmmaker’s most accessible and straightforward works. Almodovar has been one of world cinema’s most consistent storytellers of the past quarter century, carving a personal style that pays homage to all sorts of legendary directors, including the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Luis Bunuel.

Almodovar’s American fan-base might divide over the apparent simplicity of “Volver,” which lacks the sort of intricately structured, interwoven plot threads that marked the director’s masterful “Talk to Her,” one of the strongest features on the prolific moviemaker’s resume. “Volver” also lacks the outrageous sexual gamesmanship that has come to be identified as a hallmark of Almodovar’s world. The mostly one-thing-at-a-time narrative of “Volver” proves one of its essential assets, and the payoff, like that of so many Almodovar movies, leaves a deep impression on the viewer.

In her Oscar-nominated turn as the industrious Raimunda, Penelope Cruz fulfills the promise of her captivating beauty. It has been rightly pointed out by a number of observers that Hollywood has failed Cruz by consigning her to anemic roles that trade exclusively on her otherworldly allure. Acting on her home turf is a different matter. Cruz’s fellow Spaniard Almodovar knows that she is gifted enough to play a much greater range of roles than the ones that have been offered in America, and Raimunda is the performer’s most vivid creation. Determined, smart, and optimistic, even in the face of long odds and dire circumstances, Raimunda provides “Volver” with a pounding heartbeat.

It is almost too easy to point out that “Volver,” like so many of Almodovar’s signature movies, focuses on the lives of females. Raimunda is surrounded, materially and perhaps spiritually, by very important women. Her daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo), her sister Sole (Lola Duenas), ailing friend Agustina (Blanca Portillo), elderly aunt Paula (Chus Lampreave), and a handful of other female neighbors help and are helped by Raimunda throughout the course of the story. Fulfilling the promise of the title is the possibility that Raimunda’s dead mother Irene, played by Almodovar favorite Carmen Maura, has returned from the dead.

Even though “Volver” explores the pain of sexual abuse, cancer, murder, and infidelity, Almodovar miraculously locates a buoyant silver lining and a spirit of encouragement amidst the hardships visited upon the characters. Viewers new to Almodovar’s movies will see plenty of what makes the director’s body of work so satisfying, including his rich use of vivid color, which functions symbolically and aesthetically. Red is the dominant hue in “Volver,” and Almodovar uses it in a variety of arresting ways. Almodovar capitalizes on the color’s identification with blood and passion, two descriptors that could be applied to so many of the director’s tales.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Critics have lined up to sing the praises of Guillermo del Toro’s latest movie “Pan’s Labyrinth,” a well made fantasy set during the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. Juggling outré surrealism with equally ghoulish reality, del Toro returns to some of the same territory he covered in “The Devil’s Backbone,” a movie just as good as “Pan’s Labyrinth.” Following the tale of Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a young girl whose stepfather is a cruel military officer, “Pan’s Labyrinth” will delight fans of the filmmaker’s fantastic imagination. Far from a masterpiece, however, the movie tempers one’s enthusiasm with several lost opportunities, including a better handling of the heroine’s relationship with some of the supernatural creatures she encounters.

Following exposition that introduces Ofelia and her very sick, very pregnant mother, del Toro dissects the movie into two related spheres: the hallucinatory otherworld that Ofelia visits in order to receive instructions from the half-man, half-goat faun of the title, and the nightmarish compound where Ofelia’s violent stepfather Vidal (Sergi Lopez) oversees an operation to stop a group of rebel fighters in the surrounding woods. Toggling back and forth between the two storylines, del Toro might have taken more steps to integrate them, but taken individually, scenes regularly crackle with suspense and intrigue.

Like many fairy tales, Ofelia is given a set of three tasks she must accomplish in order to restore her crumbling world. In one sequence, she descends into the root system of a gnarled tree to face a bloated, phlegmatic toad. In another, she encounters the nightmarish Pale Man (Doug Jones, who also plays Pan), a beautifully realized bogeyman who keeps his eyeballs in the palms of his hands. All of the creature design is impeccable, but some viewers might become impatient with a pronounced lack of clarity in the rules and regulations of the fantasy realm, and exactly how Ofelia’s assignments are tied to a particular outcome.

In terms of narrative coherence, del Toro does a great deal better when he is dealing with Mercedes (Maribel Verdu), Vidal’s housekeeper and a secret ally and conspirator with the guerillas. As Mercedes develops into a surrogate mother for Ofelia, she finds herself in constant danger of being discovered by her sadistic employer, and Verdu brings a perfect blend of defiance, determination, and fear to her role. The inevitable showdown between Mercedes and Vidal is a heart pounding showstopper of a scene that will have the more squeamish viewers burying their faces in their hands.

By the time “Pan’s Labyrinth” marches to its potent, emotionally charged conclusion, del Toro has slowly but surely engrossed his viewers, and the film has a mostly satisfying resonance. Some will likely read Ofelia’s encounters with the fantasy world merely as her means of dealing with the unfathomable conditions of her situation, while others will identify an allegorical treatment of wartime cruelties. Yet another option simply believes in fairies, fauns, and other magical brutes. Del Toro doesn’t require us to choose, which makes “Pan’s Labyrinth” very much a movie worth seeing.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Kevin Macdonald, who previously directed the often engrossing “Touching the Void” and the brilliant “One Day in September,” makes his narrative feature filmmaking debut with “The Last King of Scotland,” an adaptation of Giles Foden’s well-regarded 1998 novel. Proving that he might still be better equipped to deliver gripping documentaries, Macdonald is occasionally hamstrung by the odd blending of fact and fiction, a regular distraction in a movie that causes audience members to wonder which things Ugandan dictator Idi Amin really did and what was merely cooked up for the sake of the drama.

Forest Whitaker, as the title character, goes to town in the role, catching Amin’s gregariousness and outlandish charisma without losing sight of the bloodthirsty tyrant who ordered scores of deaths among his own people. Whitaker shows just how easily one might have been seduced by the charming military man who promised a new Uganda to enthusiastic crowds, only to make a steady string of awful decisions that spiraled the country into misery. It is no easy task to empathize with such a well lampooned monster, but Whitaker brings his expert fire to the role, accomplishing a performance that ranks with his work in Jim Jarmusch’s underappreciated “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai” and Clint Eastwood’s “Bird.”

Despite Whitaker’s domination of the film, the story is told through the eyes of the fictionalized character Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), a Scottish M.D. who literally picks out Uganda from a spin of his bedroom globe. Following a flirtation with the fetching wife of the local physician, Garrigan unwittingly impresses Amin when the dictator’s hand requires medical attention following a car accident. Amin, who just won’t take no for an answer, cajoles Garrigan into service as his personal doctor, and the early sections of the movie delight in the strange relationship between the two unlikely acquaintances.

Macdonald strains to show how a person in Garrigan’s position might have been kept largely in the dark about Amin’s atrocious actions, but the young man’s initial exuberance for Amin is quashed when he witnesses the aftermath of an attempt on the leader’s life. In a risky move that completely obliterates credulity, Garrigan also begins an affair with one of Amin’s wives (Kerry Washington), a woman embittered because of Amin’s anger and shame over their epileptic son. It is virtually impossible to believe that anyone in Amin’s orbit would dare to seduce one of his wives, and this section of the movie is one of its least convincing, despite Washington’s wonderful acting.

As Garrigan’s relationship in Amin’s inner circle begins to collapse under the weight of the leader’s increasing paranoia, “The Last King of Scotland” relies more on melodrama and less on the effortless quirkiness that outlines the movie’s first half. A major plot point piggybacks on the well-known hijacking of an Air France flight that Amin invited to land in Entebbe. While Garrigan’s story in that episode has been fabricated, it shows the symbolic turning of the tide against Amin, and might have made an intriguing movie on its own.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Many admirers of Jennifer Hudson’s breakthrough performance in “Dreamgirls” might be simultaneously thrilled at her Golden Globe win and perplexed that it was bestowed for work in a supporting role category. Her presence in the screen translation of the Tom Eyen/Henry Krieger Broadway show commands our attention at every turn and functions as the movie’s core. Yes, the players form an ensemble, but it doesn’t take much to argue that Hudson could just have easily been awarded as a lead. By the time she belts the powerhouse tearjerker “And I Am Telling You That I’m Not Going,” she’s utterly taken control of the movie.

Despite not winning best musical when it debuted in the early 1980s, “Dreamgirls” snared half a dozen Tony awards and developed into a well-loved show. Filmmaker Bill Condon, who tackled the screenplay for the feature film adaptation of “Chicago,” as well as helmed interesting projects like “Kinsey” and “Gods and Monsters,” wears both hats on “Dreamgirls” and he excels at each task. The movie version of “Dreamgirls” occasionally reminds viewers that some things might work better with the immediacy and urgency of live performance, but like the finest Broadway to Hollywood translations, “Dreamgirls” regularly manages to work as a movie while maintaining an essential fidelity to the source material.

Even for folks unfamiliar with the basic plot, “Dreamgirls” will ring some bells. A thinly veiled spin on the story of the Supremes, “Dreamgirls” charts the meteoric showbiz ascendancy of an African-American “girl group” that crosses over from regional popularity in Detroit (transposed from the play’s original Chicago setting) to connect with white audiences. The issue of race is cannily addressed throughout the movie, reiterating the frustration of artists who saw their vibrant contributions to popular song pigeonholed as “race records” while bland covers by white artists dominated the charts and airwaves and sold millions of copies. As a Berry Gordy-esque manager, Jamie Foxx has the difficult task of playing a character caught between his desire to appeal to the broadest possible audience while avoiding his performers’ accusations that he’s selling out.

Once Hudson’s Effie is demoted from lead vocals to singing backup, some of the story’s energy shifts to the less worldly Deena, and Beyonce Knowles finally has a role worthy of her talent. While Deena, who suffers some tremendously spiteful comments from Foxx’s Curtis, is in many ways a less interesting character than Effie, Knowles fits perfectly into the Diana Ross mold, and fans will thrill at the way in which a seemingly endless parade of Ross-like costumes, hairstyles, and even musical phases and trends are dazzlingly replicated.

Appearing alongside the younger performers are veterans Danny Glover and Eddie Murphy, who are both warm and memorable in their respective parts. Murphy, as James “Thunder” Early, knocks one out of the park, lighting up his character with a combination of moves and traits borrowed from the likes of James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Jackie Wilson, and Marvin Gaye, among others. While a number of alterations have been made to the original property, including a quartet of tunes written just for the film, Condon’s version of “Dreamgirls” will likely appeal to a new generation of fans, some of whom might even feel compelled to seek out the original cast recording to hear for themselves how Jennifer Hudson stacks up against Jennifer Holliday.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

A powerful and thought provoking bazooka of a movie, “Children of Men” represents the best work yet from director Alfonso Cuaron. Based on P.D. James’ dystopian novel, “Children of Men” is stunningly accomplished, from its incorporation of “Blade Runner” style retro-futurism to the woozy, visceral immediacy of its photography. Despite its bleak, nightmarish vision of 2027, the film carries with it an undeniable sense of hope, and the experience of viewing it will leave many with a profound desire for self reflection. There’s no clever Easter Egg following the end credits, merely one word repeated three times that reminds us of the movie’s leitmotif.

Carved with some of the same gritty, documentary-style design as Paul Greengrass’ gripping “Bloody Sunday,” “Children of Men” places the viewer in the center of its alarming universe, a police-state Great Britain, which turns out to have the last functioning government in the world. Following an infertility epidemic, no babies have been born on the planet for 18 years. A terrorist organization known as the Fishes wreaks much havoc in fierce battles with government soldiers assigned to the streets to staunch the waves of refugees, called “fugees,” attempting to breach fences designed to keep them out. With no apparent future, the earth descends into chaos and despair.

The movie’s exposition is largely accomplished in the margins of its stellar production design, courtesy of Geoffrey Kirkland and Jim Clay. We learn of the cult of personality surrounding “Baby Diego,” a worldwide celebrity due to his status as the globe’s youngest person. We also see advertisements for companies peddling suicide kits, as well as other spots for procedures designed to help people preserve their youth. Orwellian public service announcements warn citizens to report suspected illegal immigrants. In the midst of it all, hard-drinking Theo Faron (a terrific Clive Owen) is reluctantly caught up in an odyssey to shepherd some very precious cargo to a group of activists en route to a mysterious rendezvous that may or may not exist.

Matching the quality of the production design is the visual impact provided by Emmanuel Lubezki’s phenomenal work as the film’s director of photography and George Richmond’s almost unprecedented skill as camera operator. Several carefully rigged sequences, including a hair-raising car/motorcycle chase and a long, unbroken shot (digitally stitched together from several takes) during a ferocious urban battle, will provide movie lovers and cinematography fanatics with study material for years to follow. Few films in recent memory come as close to placing the viewer at the pounding heart of the action.

Detractors have sniped that the movie fails to address the wealth of issues raised by its intriguing premise, and several conservative critics have lashed out at the perceived liberties taken by Cuaron in transposing the novel to the screen. Cuaron strikes a balance, however, allowing his audience to puzzle out many of the movie’s enigmas. Other answers are intentionally missing. Where some see only indelicate broadsides leveled at the current state of U.S. policy, in terms of the war in Iraq and other ills of the Bush administration, others will discover a subtler parable that raises questions more than it points fingers.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Documentary filmmakers Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing have created an interesting product in “Jesus Camp,” a movie focused on very young Christian charismatic evangelicals and the one-sided worldview that drives their passionate belief in an inevitably politicized brand of religion.  The directors always do their best to maintain fairness and balance in the telling, but the often incendiary arguments constructed by the movie’s subjects have a way of unnerving mainstream audience members who don’t buy “intelligent design” and aren’t ready to condemn Harry Potter to the stake.

Following a handful of devout children to Becky Fischer’s Devils Lake, North Dakota “Kids on Fire” camp and other places, the filmmakers mostly stand back and allow the voices of their subjects to provide the commentary.  The contrary view is provided by Air America radio host Mike Papantonio, a self-described Christian who at one point engages Fischer in conversation on his program.  Papantonio’s segments are dwarfed, however, by the amount of time the movie spends with Fischer, a pastor well-practiced in the art of staying on message.  Viewers will be hard pressed to catch Fischer offering her young charges anything resembling legitimate choice, as that would allow too much room for possible dissent.

The three kids featured in the movie are by any account well-behaved, well-spoken, and well-mannered.  Levi, whose awful mullet is surely a sin against fashionistas, wants desperately to be a preacher.  Tory loves Christian heavy metal music, but occasionally worries that she might be dancing “for the flesh.”  Little Rachael approaches strangers, Chick tracts in hand, asking them in an impossibly chipper voice whether they’ve considered where they will be spending eternity.  All three of the kids, as well as Fischer, are mostly likable, which cannot be said for oily Reverend Ted Haggard, who appears in a scene.  Shot prior to the sex and drugs scandal that toppled him from his position as the leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, Haggard interacts with Levi, and his demeanor in the movie is standoffish, smug, and sarcastic.  In light of Haggard’s recent newsworthiness, his presence in the documentary adds a new, if unintended, dimension to the film.

One of the most remarkable aspects of “Jesus Camp” is the sheer volume of guilt Fischer heaps on the shoulders of her tiny charges.  Unquestionably, Fischer preaches with deep and abiding conviction that what she does helps and doesn’t harm, but the number of times shame is invoked as a teaching tool has a tendency to overshadow the values of love and compassion – which are eerily absent during the intense sessions that conjure up visions of a scarily personified Satan and all the temptations he offers.

Grady and Ewing clearly choose to withhold their point of view (though one can argue that it is implied), and that position of neutrality hampers some of the impact that the movie might have otherwise made.  By remaining focused only on the chosen subjects, information regarding the history of the evangelical movement is absent.  The result is a lack of context that doesn’t clearly offer viewers much beyond a colorful portrait of some unique people.  To its credit, however, “Jesus Camp” manages to appeal to viewers on opposite ends of the political spectrum (for obviously different reasons), and the conversation it generates makes it very much worth seeing.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Potter Stewart is largely known for initially claiming of hard-core porn that “I know it when I see it,” a line that concludes “…and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.” Another of the justice’s best known statements is “Censorship reflects society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.” This idea courses through veteran documentarian Kirby Dick’s “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” a sharp and irreverent examination of the arcane practices of the Motion Picture Association of America’s movie ratings board. “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” is required viewing for movie buffs and people interested in free speech issues.

Dick sets the scene by explaining, through vibrantly creative animation, the MPAA ratings from G to NC-17. While the ratings themselves are familiar to most American moviegoers, the process by which they are decided remains shrouded in clandestine obscurity that has frustrated hundreds of moviemakers and thousands of viewers. Launched in 1968 by the major Hollywood studios, the ratings board was for decades the province of Jack Valenti, a slick politico cast as the movie’s grinning villain. Dick spares no opportunity to skewer Valenti’s inconsistencies and distortions regarding the role of the board, and numerous interview clips allow Valenti ample opportunity to make himself look like a boob.

Dick focuses on theatrical exhibition as opposed to the DVD market, which means that the movie never gets around to discussing the impact of the ratings system once films are released on home video. Generalities are given regarding Europe’s inversion of the sex-violence equation, but Dick is essentially silent on government censorship in countries beyond the United States. A majority of the filmmaker’s arguments, however, are on the money. The MPAA clearly privileges heterosexuality over homosexuality, and one of the most disturbing segments of the movie provides substantive visual evidence that female pleasure is verboten while violence against women is condoned.

Dick includes interviews with a number of filmmakers whose work has been punished by the MPAA. Matt Stone discusses the puppet sex of “Team America: World Police,” Kimberly Peirce articulates her frustration regarding the handling of “Boys Don’t Cry,” and John Waters, with characteristic humor and aplomb, notes with trepidation that “A Dirty Shame” couldn’t even discuss certain aspects of sexuality, let alone show them. All of the above moviemakers dealt with the consequences of an initial NC-17 rating, a commercial kiss of death that is particularly vexing to moviemakers whose work is intended for adult audiences.

Because the people who work as raters do so anonymously, Dick hires a private eye to out them, and the results are a mixed bag. Significant sections of the movie are devoted to a kind of lowbrow investigative journalism complete with stakeouts, spy cameras, car pursuits, and garbage digging. While the energies spent on this thread connect later with Dick’s own appeal process once “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” has been branded with an NC-17, the movie would have more wisely utilized this time to cover possible ways in which the ratings system could be improved. Despite these shortcomings, however, “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” is thought provoking fare.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

With “Apocalypto,” Mel Gibson continues to earn his well-deserved reputation as one of Hollywood’s most consistent purveyors of sadism and gore in the name of heroism.  A mostly cornball hodgepodge of obviously telegraphed movie clichés, “Apocalypto” clearly prizes drama over historical accuracy, despite the retainer of academic experts to lend a false sense of “authenticity” to the proceedings.  Period movies rarely bother much with the details.  After all, the play’s the thing.  Gibson’s thesis, however, manages to be both woeful and wrongheaded.  “Apocalypto” positively reeks with the underlying notion that decadent cultures are doomed to destruction.  It would be unfair to spoil the film’s ludicrous ending, but visitors familiar with Gibson’s oeuvre will smell it from quite a distance.

Set sometime during the Classic period of Maya history prior to the arrival of the Spanish, “Apocalypto” revels in the depiction of brutal violence as a Maya village is destroyed by a raiding party of native bounty hunters rounding up future human sacrifices.  Central character Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) manages to hide his pregnant wife and small son in a rocky well prior to his own capture, vowing that he will return.  A forced march to a teeming city center comes with all sorts of despair and torment, especially at the hands of nasty Snake Ink (Rodolfo Palacios), Jaguar Paw’s cruel tormentor.

Along with co-screenwriter Farhad Safinia, Gibson imagines a Maya city as a chaotic hell on earth where people are bought and sold, hundreds of workers are forced into labor, and priests make gruesome offerings of young men whose hearts and heads are separated from their bodies.  The means by which Jaguar Paw is spared from the sacrificial altar is as preposterously illogical as it is visually stimulating.  The second half of the movie is largely concerned with Jaguar Paw’s desperate race back home, enlivened by the excitement of a band of deadly pursuers led by the ferocious Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo).

Gibson alludes to a handful of possible reasons for the collapse of the Maya, including agricultural failure, disease, and clueless leadership.  In one scene that should have been excised, a little girl prophesies a laundry list of horrors, basically giving away the rest of the film’s action.  Gibson typically plays to the lowest common denominator, and the second half of “Apocalypto” is bursting with ridiculously over the top ham-handedness, especially in its dealings with Jaguar Paw’s wife Seven (Dalia Hernandez) as she goes into labor.

Gibson himself has suggested that the movie is designed to offer allegorical suggestions about the moral flaws of modern society and its politics, but does making a movie so attuned to the spectacle of bloodletting simply add to the list of what’s wrong with us?  Gibson completely ignores the technological and scientific achievements of the Maya in order to focus exclusively on a heightened sense of the dominating culture’s view that indigenous people are subhuman savages in need of spiritual rescue.  Gibson is all too eager to reinforce the long held stereotypes of colonialist philosophy, and “Apocalypto” is weaker for it.