Definitely a powerful movie. Not for the queasy stomachs (like mine, ha) but the filming and the characters and the historical aspects and incorporating the natural language and the entire story itself… pretty amazing. The last few minutes were also pretty hard-hitting.
I have a thing for history and I haven’t really seen much about Mayan history, if at all… I’ve always dreamed of traveling through Central and South Americas- I told a person the other night that if I had to pick only one continent to travel through, I’d pick the lower Americas. The biodiversity there is amazing (esp. in Central America) and I’m curious about the people and culture. It helps that I took 3 years of Spanish so a few cultural lessons were also included. My 2004 trip to Costa Rica sealed the deal- I AM going to travel more countries in that area!
With culture comes history… so the movie provided a bit of that for me. The filmmakers tried to incorporate as many historical facts into their story, props and costumes as much as possible. After the movie, I watched the bonus feature about how they made the film and it was pretty neat.
What amazed me the most about the movie were the strength of the characters- their physical and mental strength. Freakin’ wow.
Watch it - and have a trash can next to you, just in case! No, just kidding. Kinda.
Yeah, it was surprisingly good. I especially enjoyed the first half, which was more of a cultural antropological study. The second half was a mix of horror and action, but cool nevertheless. I agree, there were strong characters.
Perhaps you could v/blog about your trips down there?
That’s a good observation of the movie- all the blood and gore made me look away from the screen QUITE a few times throughout the movie… the first half was definitely fascinating in the sense that you described above.
I did think about a “travel series” for this blog- an entry dedicated to a trip I took somewhere… beginning with Costa Rica, my only Central American experience thus far
Thanks!
Jess,
I saw that movie while it’s in the theaters during Christmastime (Hollywood just knows how to play it… during a nice holiday like Christmas instead of Halloween!) with my boyfriend and his brothers. Needless to say, my feminine opinion was overcame by their votes.
One good thing from that movie was the “already” open-captioned due to foreign language throughout the movie. Indeed, I would have to seconded with what you just discussed about the Mayan civilization history. Whew.
I’m just simply glad that we don’t have childbirth like that anymore, the baby born in flood of water in the hole in ground.
hola apocalypto