This is the plot in Mel Gibson's new film "Apocalypse" this year. Following the controversial work "The Passion" in 2004, Lao Bu spent two years creating this masterpiece "Apocalypse", a poem about Mayan civilization. It can be seen from the title alone that this is a very ambitious work. In view of Lao Bu’s strong self-awareness in "Brave Heart" and "The Suffering", I remind myself from time to time when watching the film to be careful not to get caught by his plot. Unexpectedly, in the film Finally, after a lot of twists and turns, when I completely lost the ability to counterattack, Lao Bu started to attack, using a few sailboats, just like that, completely captured me, and I couldn't accept it.
The whole film will show us the most primitive life state of mankind as "complete and true" as possible: Tiger Claw and his relatives, friends, living in a forest tribe, they live by hunting, one day, stronger and more advanced" The "town" tribe ransacked their tribe and captured them as slaves, preparing to use them as sacrifices, praying for the rain to cure diseases. The sudden solar eclipse gave Tiger Claw a chance to survive, but he killed the son of the other leader in the process of fleeing, so a jungle chase began. Tiger Claw experienced a waterfall and fell into a swamp during the escape. He realized that Father’s teaching: Don’t be afraid, you must overcome fear, so I started to fight back...The whole story is here, the definite theme is to overcome fear and face it bravely, just like the desire for freedom in the original "Brave Heart", but " "Apocalypse" is not that simple. What Gibson wants to express is actually the infringement of the "civilization" that we think is advanced against those "civilizations" that are truly pure in his heart. This is the real intention of the director.
If the several civilizations in the film are made into a sequence, we can see that the civilization of Tiger Claw is the most basic. They live by fishing and hunting, live in clusters, and there is no difference between the rich and the poor. The elderly have a higher status in the tribe. Noble, advocating the reproduction of life, this is the primary form of civilization; while the civilization of hostile tribes is a higher level, they have their own architectural sculptures, there is a clear division of labor, the gap between the rich and the poor, and the social class. Appeared, such as nobles, sacrifices, craftsmen and slaves, they have complete sacrifice rituals, which can be regarded as the prototype of primitive religion. This powerful tribe’s looting of weak tribes seems reasonable, and the predation of the weak is always natural. Finally, the most advanced (recognized by us or most people) civilization is the few sailing ships that arrive at the end of the film and the modern civilization it represents. The identities of the people on the boat are very interesting, with gorgeously dressed merchants, samurai in armor, and priests all in black. This represents several major elements of modern Western civilization: commercial plunder in the budding state of capitalism, conquest by force, and the spread of religion.
When this kind of civilization sequence is placed in front of you, after watching the grievances between the two primary civilizations for more than 110 minutes, suddenly a more advanced civilization opens up. The feeling at this time is just It's as if you see a couple in the countryside fighting in your own home, and they are not fighting, suddenly the door is kicked open, and a person from the city breaks in, and it feels like they took both of them one by one. At this time, I just wanted to yell: Why are you? Can you control it? ! ! I think this should be what Mel Gibson wanted to say, the only difference is that he uses English, maybe a few more swear words!
In the eyes of Mel Gibson and those of the primitive tribes, those white men who came on a sailing boat were not civilization at all, but barbarians. These barbarians meant destruction, and all they could do was fearless To find another beginning... I think, maybe this is the "revelation" this movie wants to tell us.
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