Apocalypto
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Apocalypto |
| Original title | Apocalypto |
 | |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | Mayathan |
| Publishing year | 2006 |
| length | 139 minutes |
| Age rating |
FSK 18 JMK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Mel Gibson |
| script | Mel Gibson Farhad Safinia |
| production | Mel Gibson Bruce Davey |
| music | James Horner |
| camera | Dean Semler |
| cut |
Kevin Stitt John Wright |
| occupation | |
| |
Apocalypto is an action and historical drama by director Mel Gibson from 2006. The American film was released in cinemas there on December 8, 2006 and topped the hit list on the opening weekend; it opened in German cinemas on December 14, 2006 .
The plot of the film is in the first half of the 16th century, just before the Spanish colonization of Central America , settled and playing in the settlement area of the Maya in Yucatan . In the film, Mayathan is exclusively spoken and translated through subtitles .
action
The hunter Paw of the Jaguar lives with his heavily pregnant wife Seven, his son Fast Tortoise and his father Blitzender Himmel in a village in the Mesoamerican tropical rainforest . When manhunters under the leadership of Leitwolf attacked the settlement one morning, Pranke des Jaguar managed to get his wife and young son to safety in a very deep hole in the ground. After the fight, he and other members of his tribe are taken prisoner and witness how his father is killed. On the way to the enemy city, in an environment destroyed by work slaves, in front of withered fields, they meet a young girl who is presumably suffering from smallpox and is sitting next to his mother's corpse . When a slave driver repeatedly tries to keep the girl at a distance with the help of a stick to prevent infection, the girl calls out to them that when “day becomes night”, the man who brings the jaguar, she, “the hideous ones “To whom would lead to extinction of earth and heaven and them and their world.
In the city the captured women are sold as slaves, the men are painted blue and placed on a step pyramid , on which they are to be ritually sacrificed . When the jaguar's paw lies on the sacrificial table, a total solar eclipse occurs . The high priest uses this in his favor by demonstrating his supposed power to the townspeople to communicate with the god Kukulkan . After a brief eye contact with the king , he asks the sun god to let it get light again when he no longer needs any further human sacrifices. Shortly afterwards the total darkness is over.
The Jaguar's paw and the other prisoners are then brought by Leitwolf's troops to a training area, over which they have to run in pairs for their lives while arrows, spears and stones are thrown and shot at them. The jaguar's paw is pierced by an arrow and falls to the ground. Leitwolf's son, who at the end of the field has the task of killing any survivors, approaches him, but the jaguar's paw manages to mortally injure him with the tip of the arrow that hit him. Pursued by Leitwolf and eight of his men, he flees into the rainforest. There some of the persecutors fall victim to animals. In the familiar surroundings, the Jaguar's Paw succeeds in eliminating all but two of the other pursuers. After escaping to the beach, he also escapes them because they are distracted by the sight of anchored Spanish ships and conquistadors landing in boats - the last point of the prophecy has come true. The jaguar's paw arrives in his village in time to save Sieben, who recently gave birth in the pit, which has meanwhile been flooded by heavy rain, and to save his children. He and his family set out to find a new beginning in the jungle.
background
The filming began on November 21, 2005 in Catemaco and Veracruz in the state of Veracruz and in Yucatán in Mexico .
Digital cinema cameras ( Panavision Genesis) were not used for the recording technology . It was recorded on HDCAM SR.
An attempt was made to shoot the film in Mayathan , the Maya language of Yucatán. The language is spoken by approximately one million people in Mexico and is considered one of the most important Mexican languages. The Yucatec Maya spoken in the film has a strong accent and is incomprehensible to a native speaker, according to Professor Nikolai Grube from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn .
Mel Gibson does not play in the film, but he can be seen briefly in the preview ( teaser ) at approx. 1:46 min in a picture in the middle of a group of Maya slave laborers.
With an estimated production budget of around 40 million US dollars , the film has something to import more than 120 million US dollars at the box office. In Germany, the film was seen by 217,143 cinema-goers.
The Maya settlement area was first touched by Europeans on Columbus' fourth journey from May 9, 1502 to November 7, 1504. From 1511 there were military clashes with the Spaniards and between 1524 and 1697 all the principalities of the Maya were subjugated. In the Yucatán, the conquista ended in 1547.
criticism
The lexicon of international films sees the film as a "formally brilliant, but immensely brutal action spectacle, whose social and political implications are at best asserted and are therefore all the more annoying."
The film critic of the New Yorker , Anthony Lane , called the film a "pathological art". Mel Gibson is "a fool in some ways," but he has "learned how to tell a story and how to get the beholder's pulse quickened". One must "admire this fundamental gift, unusual as it is in Hollywood these days." At the same time, one must ask oneself which obsessions are what drives it.
Cinema magazine described the film as "visually powerful, emotionally charged and full of grace". Actor Robert Duvall called the film the best in 25 years. Director Quentin Tarantino said, “I think it's a masterpiece. I think it was the most artistically valuable film of the year ”. Actor Edward James Olmos said, "It's the best movie I've seen in years, it blew me away." In 2013, director Spike Lee put the film on a list of the most influential films.
Other reviews accuse the film of reinforcing the stereotype of the bloodthirsty Native Americans. In addition, the film is too distant from reality, e.g. B. by the staged mass battles, the representation that there were Mayan peoples who lived in the forest, and also in general that the end of the Mayan high culture coincided with the arrival of the Spaniards, although this ended at least 300 years earlier . Others, on the other hand, see the film less as a documentary and more as a work critical of civilization.
Awards
-
Won
- Central Ohio Film Critics Association - COFCA Best Cinematography Award (2007) - Dean Semler
- Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards - DFWFCA Award for Best Cinematography (2006) - Dean Semler
- First Americans in the Arts - FAITA Award for Outstanding Performance as Leading Actor (2007) - Rudy Youngblood
- First Americans in the Arts - FAITA Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor (2007) - Morris Birdyellowhead
- Imagen Award for Best Supporting Actor (2007) - Gerardo Taracena
- Imagen Award for Best Supporting Actress (2007) - Dalia Hernandez
- Motion Picture Sound Editors, USA - Golden Reel Award for best sound editing in film music - Dick Bernstein, Jim Henrikson
- Phoenix Film Critics Society - PFCS Award for Best Cinematography (2006) - Dean Semler
-
Nominated
- Oscar for the best makeup - Aldo Signoretti, Vittorio Sodano
- Oscar for Best Sound - Sean McCormack, Kami Asgar
- Oscar for best sound editor - Kevin O'Connell, Greg P. Russell, Fernando Cámara
- Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA - Saturn Award for Best Director (2007) - Mel Gibson
- Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA - Saturn Award Best International Film (2007)
- American Society of Cinematographers, USA - ASC Award Best Cinematography (2007) - Dean Semler
- British Academy Film Awards - Best Film in a Non-English Language (2007) - Mel Gibson, Bruce Davey
- Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards - BFCA Best Foreign Film (2007)
- Chicago Film Critics Association Awards - CFCA Award for Best Foreign Film (2006)
- Golden Globe Award - Golden Globe Best Film in a Non-English Language (2007)
- Hollywood Reporter Key Art Awards - Key Art Award for best motion picture poster for an action film (2006)
- Imagen Award Best Film (2007)
- Motion Picture Sound Editors, USA - Golden Reel Award for best sound editing in dialogues - Sean McCormack, Kami Asgar, Scott GG Haller, Jessica Gallavan, Lisa J. Levine, Linda Folk
- Online Film Critics Society Awards - OFCS Award Best Cinematography (2007) - Dean Semler
- Satellite Award - Best Film in Non-English Language (2006)
- St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Awards - Best Non-English Language Film (2006)
Web links
- Apocalypto in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Apocalypto at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- Apocalypto at Metacritic (English)
- Apocalypto in the online film database
- “Montezuma's Revenge” , article from December 13, 2006 in the telepolis by Rüdiger Suchsland
- Comparison of the cut versions Pro7 from 12 - no youth release from Apocalypto at Schnittberichte.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ Approval certificate for Apocalypto . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2006 (PDF; test number: 108 443 K).
- ↑ Age rating for Apocalypto . Youth Media Commission .
- ↑ a b “Gibson film is bursting with errors” in Focus .
- ↑ Apocalypto (2006) on boxofficemojo.com (English), accessed April 8, 2012
- ↑ TOP 100 DEUTSCHLAND 2006 on insidekino.de , accessed on April 8, 2012
- ↑ Apocalypto. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Anthony Lane: Fighting Men , Critique of Apocalypto in The New Yorker , December 18, 2006, p. 100.
- ↑ Critique of the film in the magazine Cinema ( Memento of the original from October 10, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ↑ Robert Duvall interview Archived from the original on December 11, 2007. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Premiere . March 2007.
- ↑ Interview with Quentin Tarantino, FILMINK Magazine , August 2007.
- ↑ Read Spike Lee's' Essential List of Films for Filmmakers Vulture.com, Jesse David Fox, July 26, 2013
- ^ Critique of the film by the Independent Media Center ( Memento from February 16, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ “This film does harm to” - Statement by the Department of Ancient American Studies and Ethnology at the University of Bonn ( Memento from May 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ "Apocalypto: Criticism goes wrong" - answer to the criticism in Focus .
