Introducing new worlds takes time and care
Mel Gibson made a movie called Apocalypto which told of the effects of the Mayans upon a small tribe in the jungles nearby a Mayan city. He framed the tale from the point of view of one of the tribesmen and his wife.
(In brief, the tale tells how the Mayans take most of the tribes-folk prisoner and march them to the city. Our hero manages to save his pregnant wife and toddler son by hiding them in a deep cave that is a limestone formation that looks like a well; in the cave she escapes notice but is trapped until he can come to rescue her, and what’s more, if a heavy rain comes the cave will fill with water and she and their child will likely drown. The Mayans sell the women as slaves, and send the men to be sacrificed to the Sun God. But our hero alone escapes this, with a troop of Mayans sent to track and kill him. He must make it back to his home village in time to save his wife and child before the rain comes, and somehow escape his hunters. And hanging over all this is the imminent arrival of the Spanish ships … though of course neither the Mayans nor the jungle tribes know anything about that yet.)
What struck me was how difficult I found it to sympathize with the hero (and his fellow-captives) through the first act of the movie. Gibson and his crew made detailed researches into how it’s believed Mayans and Central American tribes-folk spoke, lived, dressed, and adorned themselves. It’s fascinating — so fascinating that I couldn’t keep from looking at their piercings, tattoos, and jewelry, for the longest time.
Long after I should have been experiencing their hopes and fears along with them, I was simply ogling them, staring at this or that feature.
It didn’t help that I don’t speak the early meso-american languages they used. This meant that my eyes were constantly wandering to the bottom of the screen, reading subtitles while the guys were talking. I wasn’t watching their eyes, their expressions; I wasn’t seeing them as people, I was struggling to keep up with what they were saying by reading the print on the screen.
Step By Step
Two problems arise from this.
First, when the talesman has a strange and alien world to show to his audience, he must bring them into his world bit by bit, step by step. Start with what we in the audience know, and show us how the world is different. Then show more how the world is different and more. The Beginning of the tale, where the talesman tells us (among other things) where the tale takes place, must be extended and laid out before us gradually. This means Act 1 must be longer than normal. A ‘fast start’ to such a tale will damage its effectiveness.
Gibson, by plunging us into the world, left me still seeing the hero and his fellows as ‘the other’ even deep into Act 2. This meant that I wasn’t experiencing their hopes and fears, and I had lowered hopes and fears for them. When the crucial scenes of the Mayan warriors are shown as cruel, and Gibson intends for me to hate them, I don’t — I can’t — because I see the Mayans as almost as strange as the tribes-folk. Strangers among strangers, and me left on the outside far away, watching with more an anthropologist’s interest than a partisan’s.
Quiet Scenes
The subtitles are a more difficult choice to make. Having the actors speak in stilted ‘barbarian-speak’ is weak, and it is very, very hard to craft such ‘barbarian-speak’ in a way that convinces, that doesn’t sound false and thin as cardboard. And it’s just as hard to speak and act it. Though the actors struggled with the ‘tribal-speak’ and ‘Mayan-speak’ they used in the movie, the tongue was so strange that it’s hard for us to judge how false it is. We can accept it better. Therefore I would not have had Gibson use ‘barbarian-speak’ instead.
What about the subtitles, then? The best way around this that I can think of, is something that movies can do very well, but that Hollywood movies have forbidden for the past 30 years or so (ever since Steven Spielberg and George Lucas ushered in the era of the blockbuster ‘kiddy matinee with the A-picture budget’). This is the ‘quiet scene.’ It can be a whole scene, or it can be moments of repose within a series of scenes.
Basically, it’s just a moment or a scene in which all the actors shut up and just be — without any plot conflicts, rising tension, dramatics of any kind.
In Apocalypto there is a perfect opportunity that Gibson and his fellow-screenwriter throw away. It is night at the village — the eve of the attack. The tribe is sitting around the fire; we have to guess that they have already eaten. An elder tells a tale, and they all listen.
This is a moment when Gibson could have shown them eating. Or they could be sitting watching the stars or the sunset. Or they could have been singing, or dancing (singing and dancing does close out the scene). These give us time ‘alone’ with the characters that shows them just being themselves, and would not use subtitles, since nobody would be talking. We could watch their faces, ogle their dress and ornaments and body markings, and get used to them so that we can see past all these surfaces and begin to relate to them as people, and as our onscreen other selves.
(Composed on keyboard Thursday, April 3, 2008)
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