Acquired Tastes: Zach Braff's "Apocalypto"

Let's forget for the moment that Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto" has grossed $28,209,532 as of today.

Or that noted critic Peter Travers of Rolling Stones magazine, among many such admiring cineastes, hails Gibson for having "made a film of blunt provocation and bruising beauty".

Or that, rather sensibly, The New Yorker's Anthony Lane observes that is important to separate our evaluation of Gibson as a filmmaker from Gibson as a human being:

“Apocalypto” is a pathological work of art. It is neither gratuitous nor casual; Gibson is not trying out an idea or testing a visual manner, and the digital cameras used throughout by the director of photography, Dean Semler, yield both a lustre and a pantherish mobility that reach to the guts of the story. That is the thing about Gibson, fool that he is in other ways: he has learned how to tell a tale, and to raise a pulse in the telling. You have to admire that basic gift, uncommon as it is in Hollywood these days, though equally you have to ask what obsessions goad it on. Contrary to what his detractors say, I don’t believe Gibson is roused by violence in itself. What lures him, in his dark remoldings of Catholic iconography, is breakage and restoration—the deeper and more foul the wounds, the more pressing the need to see them healed.

Not having seen Apocalypto, I am in no position to judge the film as a work of art or as a sociological phenomenon that reflects the artistry of reality. I have, however, seen this, and regardless of how one feels about either Mel Gibson or Zach Braff, one can't deny that in the most severely disjointed aesthetic sense, they were made for each other. Enjoy!

Photo Credits:

Poster for "Apocalytpo" comes courtesy of No hay rosa sin espina .

Picture of Zach Braff comes courtesy of Yahoo.