Dissappointing dumbness:
Happy social groupings burst asunder by the minions of corrupt pagan heathens soaked in the very worst of over-refinement and superstitious blood and death lust. Our hero cannot be taken down by these ultimately lesser forces and makes his way back to the mothers of wife and jungle. And he nails that return to deep roots and sense at the movie's very end by turning away from the shock troops of modernity to head deeper into the forest. A middle way, perhaps, between mystic blood lusts and 'progress', to reference another tradition gaining ground in the 21st century.
I guess my difficulty was the lack of complexity any which way you looked. Horribly, powerfully, simplistic. True, power was gained from the shock value of the 'primitivism' depicted. And Gibson's willingness to depict this with such graphic frankness, as well as great narrative speed and economy, were all of a piece. The movie was brutal and smelt of blood at its best. Peter Bradshaw writing in the Guardian on Jan 5 is right. Gibson's magi in this was none other than Leni Riefenstahl and her chthonic blood dramas: Nuremburg and Sundanese tribesman.
But, it don't take much to see where this undoes itself. I'd like to say it really was an awful beast of a movie, but dumbness no matter how swift and blunt in its execution remains mere dumbness. The movie was fucking dumb, not only its overall arc of sense, which I'll get to in a moment, but also the action on screen. The long chase through the jungle which seemed to contract that great plane of immanence into a single arrowed path, along which all could trot in single file like raging eagle scouts. And jaguar, the big cat, that, Jaguar Paw, the badly wounded man, could escape from, and then spend the next 5 minutes outrunning. Oh ya, you just got to get a good wind behind you and do bit of weaving.
One might argue that Aristotelian verisimilitude is besides the point in what was/is largely a pre-rational appeal to pre-rational verities. And if that's your view then maybe you'll find its blunt simplicity seductive. My own rather hackneyed roll call for seduction asks for greater complexity, richness, and indeterminacy. And then finding a place within these while aiming to improve matters: down with the crap and beauty of where you're at while aiming for somewhere better. This is the nature and texture of 'reality', or at least, thats how I'd roll my moralizing.
Easy to critique, I know, but a really really good movie might have folded blood lust, arcadia, and modernity, one into t'other, into t'other. As indeed they are out in the world we inhabit. And in so doing confront us with the need to embrace and go beyond as a way forward, rather than simply turn our back. When was the last time that worked as a real answer?
Mel Gibson believes in easy answers, tho, and the world view that believes it is possible to turn one's back on the world and 'return to the jungle' is the same one that would have it that, 'all the wars in the world are caused by Jews'. Dumbness. And the movie that came out of that? Just as dumbass. Ayah.
Actually, it's not really bad, if you only expect a sort of typical Mel Gibson adventure type deal. With a bit of exotic travel in time and space thrown in to spice matters up. The faces of the actors were great, and that return to the jungle could also be seen more generously than I have. The lack of any decent story beyond a portentous fable, remains, nonetheless. Bad guys, a tough, good, sensitive guy, and chicks with a Gibson catholic mummy twist.
At least it wasn't Jude Law and Jack Black being loathsomely winsome. Gibson's intense and slightly crazed and you gotta admire that. Well I do at any rate.
And to think that day we set out with our hearts set on the viewing pleasures of Jackass. Ha. Perhaps I'm just soured by dissapointment of a different sort.
