--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > > One gets the feeling that the author of the Salon piece didn't really > see it, either. He says stuff like, "In Apocalypto, the arrival of the > Spanish signals 'a new beginning.' Remarkably, the event is portrayed as > tranquil, as if the Spaniards are the adults who have finally come to > rescue the 'littleuns' stranded on the island of William Golding's > "Lord of the Flies." This is total bullshit, and did not happen in > the film. The pedantic professor is *projecting* this onto the movie. > The line "a new beginning" clearly refers to the hero's new life now > that he has rescued his wife and children, and escaped his pursuers. It > has *nothing to do* with the arrival of the Spanish; they are mere > backdrops.
Curious about this professor's projections, I downloaded a new clean copy of "Apocalypto" to watch these last scenes and thus refresh my memory. FAR from portraying the arrival of the Spaniards as 'rescuers' or Christans come to save the Maya from their savagery, Mel Gibson has his protagonist explicitly *reject* the arriving foreigners, and go with his family into the forest. The actual dialogue goes, as his wife catches sight of the ships: - What are they? - They bring men. - Should we go to them? - We should go to the forest. To seek a new beginning. They then turn away and disappear into the forest. If anything, the protagonist is seeing the new arrivals as what they are -- new, potentially dangerous, and not worth "going to." He *certainly* does not see them as "saviors," or as "adults who have finally come to rescue the 'littleuns'." This professor is as blind as he is pedantic and petty. It is difficult for me to imagine how he could have possibly interpreted this scene and these lines as the Spanish bringing this "new beginning" he spoke so disparagingly of. It is easier for me to imagine how Judy interpreted it this way, and in fact added in the "Christian bigot" angle that was not even present in the professor's diatribe. After all, she never saw the movie. Or, seemingly, feels that she needed to. Just as she does when declaring exactly what someone on this forum was thinking and what they "really" intended when they posted something she didn't like, Judy just "knows things." We're supposed to believe that these things are true because Judy said them. Yeah, right.
