Mel Gibson's new movie tries to show what could have happened to the Mayans.
(click on photos for exclusive looks at “Apocalypto“)
From Academy Award® winning filmmaker Mel Gibson comes,“Apocalypto,” a heart stopping mythic action-adventure set against the turbulent end times of the once great Mayan civilization. When his idyllic existence is brutally disrupted by a violent invading force, a man is taken on a perilous journey to a world ruled by fear and oppression where a harrowing end awaits him. Through a twist of fate and spurred by the power of his love for his woman and his family, he will make a desperate break to return home and to ultimately save his way of life.
The central protagonist in “Apocalypto” is Jaguar Paw (played by newcomer Rudy Youngblood) who has to take the ultimate risk of life in order to bring about a change or freedom to save what he holds most dear. “He will have to risk it all,” says Gibson. “He has to put his self aside and actually fight for something larger and in this way, it is a story anyone will be able to relate to.”
“The key villain in the film is not a person,” says Gibson. “It’s a concept, and that is fear. The hero has to overcome his fear, and being overtaken with fear is something we all have struggled with in history as well as in today’s world. It’s the dissemination of fear to keep control of the masses,” declares Gibson.
In deciding the setting for “Apocalypto,” Gibson and co-screenwriter Farhad Safinia needed a backdrop that would not only provide the dramatic elements for a riveting and relentless chase film but one that would a provide a unique context for telling a compelling story about personal and societal survival. To that end, they decided to set the story against a backdrop of the ancient Maya, a civilization shrouded in mystery that heretofore has not been explored or used as the setting for a motion picture.
Locations were scouted in Mexico, Guatemala and Costa Rica that would provide them with settings from an idyllic rainforest village to the expansive Maya City that needed to be built for the film. In their scouting, they realized how little primary rainforest is left. “It really smacks you between the eyes,” says Gibson. “It’s a huge shame that because of corruption and thoughtlessness these forests are disappearing by the hectare by the minute. But we did find some beautiful rainforest in Mexico.”
“We found a jungle with a diversity of vegetation outside Catemaco,” says Anna Roth, the Mexico City based unit production manager on “Apocalypto.” It’s a great jungle that has been beautifully preserved.” “La Jungle,” as it is called, became the location for Jaguar Paw’s peaceful Maya village as well as the setting for many of the film’s jungle chase scenes.
To lend realism to the film, Gibson was determined to use faces that were unknown to a moviegoing audience. “The story will be more real, more convincing and cleaner because you don’t have any reference points for the performances you’re watching,” says Gibson. “Within the parameters of this world in ‘Apocalypto’ we will find the reality of these characters. But this doesn’t means you won’t see amazing performances from them because you will.”
Gibson wanted to capture a Mesoamerican look for the numerous characters in the movie and found the cast through extensive searches throughout Mexico especially in the Yucatan, Mexico City, Oaxaca, Xalapa, Veracruz and Catemaco; the United States (Southern California and New Mexico) and Canada (Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto and Vancouver), with candidates also from Guatemala. Overall, there were three cast members from Canada, two from the United States, and the remainder from Mexico and other parts of Central America including over 700 extras for the elaborate Maya City sequences.
Gibson hired Carla Hool, a Mexico City based casting agent. “They had to be really physically fit with bodies more like those of dancers and have great deal of stamina,” says Hool. “The Maya led a very physical life of running and hunting so the physicality of the person was very important. In fact, part of our casting process was seeing how they could move and run,” she says. (Says Diego de Landa who, in his first-hand account of the Maya at the time of the Conquest in Yucatan Before and After the Conquest, “The Indians of the Yucatan are people of good physique, tall, robust and of great strength…”)
The performers selected were not auditioned in the traditional sense; rather, they were first given lines from Maya poetry to read to see if the language came easy to them. They also were asked to run and move rather than read script lines. After the possibilities were narrowed down, candidates for each part met for a personal interview with Mel Gibson and Farhad Safinia.
The performances required in the film were very physically strenuous and demanding involving relentless high-energy running and chasing, jumping, fighting and falling. And with sparse dialogue, it was important that the actors were able to progress the story through their actions and movements rather than just through their dialogue.
For the lead role of Jaguar Paw, Gibson landed on Rudy Youngblood, a Native American of the Comanche, Cree and Yaqui people who is making his acting debut. A pow-wow dancer, singer and artist, Youngblood also is an accomplished athlete, cross-country racer and boxer who met the challenges of the physically demanding role.
“Rudy has very pure nature and a special charm, a country boy with no traces of city,” reflects Hool. “He’s innocent but at the same time has this strength that comes out and that is what was needed for the part of Jaguar Paw.”
“Jaguar Paw is a lot like me, a different time era but very much the same person,” says Rudy Youngblood. “And that’s when I realized that I didn’t have to do anything but be myself. Jaguar Paw is a strong individual. He’s a giver, not a taker. He loves his family. He’s respectful and learns not to be afraid. This is what I am taught in my culture.”
Youngblood’s physical prowess and honed athletic abilities enabled him to do most of his own stunt work including a breathtaking plunge from a 15-story building simulating a death-defying free-fall from atop a raging waterfall as well as being chased by an actual jaguar through the jungle. “Rudy is probably the most pure athlete I’ve ever seen,” recalls Mic Rodgers, stunt coordinator on “Apocalypto.” “He has his head together and is totally on top of his game. If he wasn’t an actor, I would pick him up as a stuntman.”
For Zero Wolf, Gibson needed someone to play the lead Holcane who had to have the strength and fierceness to lead but at the same time have a vulnerable, paternal side. He was found in Raoul Trujillo, a native of New Mexico who is an established actor in film and television (“Black Robe,” “The New World”) and a dancer and choreographer.
“At our first meeting, Mel said to me ‘You are Zero Wolf” and at that time, I didn’t know who Zero Wolf was,” recalls Trujillo. “And when I put the costuming and make-up on, I became Zero Wolf. It was like Mel said, ‘You don’t have to be scary. You are scary.” (In fact, De Landa described the Holcanes as warriors chosen as the soldiery who, “taking their enemies by surprise, fell on them with great cries of fierceness.”)
“Zero Wolf is a character who has a timelessness, who has existed in all cultures, within all of humanity,” continues Trujillo. “He represents the shadow of whom the hero of the film is. He drags Jaguar Paw through all the paces necessary to become who he needs to be to present hope for humanity and a future.” Yet Zero Wolf is not necessarily presented as evil in the film. “He has a complexity of being someone who has a job to do,” says Trujillo. I really invested energy into developing a character that was not rooted or based in evil but rooted in the fact that he just has a job to do,” concludes Trujillo.
Having a particular look was one of the most important criteria in determining who would play each character in “Apocalypto.” Says Carla Hool, “Rodolfo Palacio who plays Snake Ink has a really scary threatening look. He doesn’t have to act; he just has it in him. And it’s not necessarily a look you have seen before. Gerardo Taracena plays Middle Eye, an absolutely insane character, and he has that look -- and he’s a wonderful actor as well. There’s Jonathan Brewer who plays Blunted. He’s a friendlier, somewhat more innocent character. And when we saw Jonathan, he just was Blunted. We found Fernando Hernandez, the High Priest, in Toronto, and he is Maya. And the Old Storyteller – he’s an actual Maya storyteller from a tiny village in the Yucatan. Money Jaw, played by Carlos Ramos, originally from El Salvador, worked at a juice car in Santa Monica and was discovered there dancing at the Third Street Promenade.
To lend additional realism to “Apocalypto,” the script first was translated into the Maya Yucatec language by a professor at the University of Merida in Mexico. The script then was reviewed by two native Yucatec Maya speakers from Quintana Roo for authenticity on how it is actually spoken as a living language today including the colloquialism of phrases, expressions and the intention behind the lines as there can be a number of forms for a particular word or phrase depending on context and usage in real life.
These native Mayan language speakers trained the actors for five weeks on the correct pronunciation and inflection of their lines. To assist in the process of the memorizing and pronouncing their lines in Maya Yucatec, each actor had an MP3 player around his or her neck continually listening to their dialogue lines. During production, the dialogue coaches were on set every day to verify pronunciation and make whatever corrections were needed. In cases where the filmmakers needed additional lines or dialogue changes made, they would provide Gibson with the correct phrasing and pronunciation the way it actually would be spoken.
“”Apocalypto’ will have a great impact on my Maya brothers because of the pride and love of our culture and above all our roots, our language and our ancestors,” says Hilario Chi Canul, one of the Mayan dialogue coaches whose last name in Mayan, coincidentally, means “Keeper of the Language.”
When asked why he chose this project as his next movie, Gibson had this to say,“The Maya civilization per se didn’t specifically speak to me as a civilization above any other,” says Gibson. “It’s a civilization which is intriguing and about which there is still a lot to be learned. It’s really the characteristics that brought about the downfall of that civilization which were also present in other civilizations that crumbled.
“Apocalypto” is set during a turbulent pre-European Maya era in an opulent but now decaying Maya society still with the trappings of a once great civilization. This is a very visual movie and the background is extremely beautiful this is one of those films that transports you completely into the past.
“Apocalypto“ will be opening next Friday so make sure you head to your local theatre and check it out!
