Selling smart.

Apocalypto was released to DVD on May 22nd and immediately proved two things. 1. a DVD doesn’t need reviewer’s quotes on it’s cover to attract attention. (Apocalypto saves one quote for the back) and 2. Mel Gibson is one of the most daring and original thinkers to ever create major studio backed movie releases. Whatever the Walt Disney Company did to land distribution (thru Buena Vista Pictures) of Apocalypto, as daring and financially risky as it may have seemed, also proves that a major studio can understand art. It’s abundantly clear that the director does.

With a dramatic sweep of motion and light, soundscapes and environmental immersion, Apocalypto follows The Passion of the Christ and Braveheart as examples of incredible movies about topics no one else seems capable of thinking of, let alone making. If this sounds like a movie review, it isn’t. These are movies you may love or hate depending on your taste, your preference doesn’t matter. You must admit however that they are expertly crafted and glow in first class production values. While Apocalypto is an amazing experience, like it’s predecessors this isn’t light Saturday night entertainment or simple storytelling. Complexity, adult themes (read “intelligent”) and graphic visuals abound. Unforgiving perhaps but undeniable would be more accurate.

The triumph to herald here is that no one dumbed it down, not to grab an audience, not to bump the  box-office and not to hype the DVD. An inspired director and a confident studio put a movie into theaters on the strength of it’s content. If you didn’t go to the theater or buy the DVD at least consider writing to Disney to thank them for getting one right.

Expressing vision.

And while your looking up email addresses, think about dropping a note to Mel Gibson’s Icon Productions. It’s not about liking a film or it’s filmmaker. Icon’s last two films should be applauded, not for being made, but for being made so blatantly, so purposefully and so artistically. When an individual stands before a sculpture or opens their senses to a musical performance, artistry is in the mind of the beholder. Appreciating art doesn’t insist on approval or even enjoyment, merely recognition. Often the act of witnessing art is an enjoyment in itself. Mel Gibson’s skill and expertise as a movie director were recognized in 1995 when he won the Best Director Academy Award for Braveheart. Arguably a precursor of what was to come. Celebrating real artistry is far more personal. I would guess that Mr. Gibson understands this and is content to pursue his own vision, allowing the result of the efforts of all involved to be experienced as a single work; each individual as an audience and each single reaction, an emotional response to the artist.

Artist. Not a superlative. Not a rave review. A simple noun and perhaps an occupation. Throughout every frame of Apocalypto you are reminded that artists do make motion pictures and that film is an artistic medium. To tell a story through a piece of art requires skill sets mixed with creative instinct and inspiration. Vision. I dislike the term visionary as much as I rail against corporate “mission statements”. If you need to articulate some buzz-word laden convoluted  democratic compromise to define your reason for being, your mission statement should be to get out of that business. Having a vision, a story that has unfolded within your imagination, does not define you as a visionary. Rather it defines you as a thinker, perhaps as a creative daydreamer. Much more respectable and commendable in my book. It would be difficult to imagine that Mel Gibson hadn’t already seen Apocalypto in his mind long before film was loaded into the camera.

Much like a great novel or a wonderful poem, film is an artist’s medium that tells stories in language that benefits from economy of scale. At a running time of 138 minutes, Apocalypto is a relatively long movie that wastes not a frame for anything that doesn’t propel story. Images that flow into the next, frame by frame, that unfold, focus and advance where we are and who we are with. The art of photography and lighting mix with the music of an ancient language to cascade characters and circumstance onto canvases woven in exotic locations. How wonderful to have been gifted with seeing all of this unfold within yourself by simply closing your eyes. In this instance and in the others that came earlier on this path, Mel Gibson completely succeeds in translating his inner story to a medium we can all share. And he has done it with an artistic flair that is at once his own and universal in it’s very nature.

Selling art.

But what’s the pitch? How do you hype art in the commercial marketplace? Like a Warhol or a Hockney, you can simply trade on a name. Ask Thomas Kinkade. But just looking at a Thomas Kinkade will tell you that selling a name may have nothing to do with selling art. Apocalypto’s selling point certainly wasn’t pretty pictures. Intriguing to the point of mesmerizing, the pictures of Apocalypto are simply the medium of the story.

Art is experiential. Perhaps that’s what makes being witness to art so time worn and universal. Like the language of mathematics, there is something fundamental in it’s essence. So, to sell art, you must convey the promise of the experience that awaits. To qualify the experience, that promise must be delivered with compelling passion. If you’re buying all of this, Disney should have had an easy task on their hands. Just put it out there and say what it is. There’s nothing that can be promised about this film that the subsequent experience betrays. It took confidence in the product and the producer and courage from the distributor and backers to resist the marketing hacks and simply put the picture before us. “Decide yourself, there’s a story we’d like to tell that we think will captivate you.”

I’m a big fan of the clean tagline. The poster for Apocalypto (above) carries these six words, “No One Can Outrun Their Destiny”. Within the story, each of the lead characters is making their way down a path. As these paths merge they quicken and narrow and each is hurtled toward consequences that redirect the destinies they (and we) may have expected. Who is outrunning what destiny makes for a continuing atmosphere of suspense. Within the movie business of producing and releasing Apocalypto, the suspense must have also been felt, but it seems that everyone connected to the film believed in that tagline as well. In the world of making Apocalypto, no one has outrun their destiny. Rather, they have approached yet another defining milestone on a path to creating great art. Icon, nicely done. Disney, thanks for not “hucking” it all up.

In addition to his Director credit, Mel Gibson also shares Writer credits with the film’s Co-Producer Farhad Safinia. Technical credits for the film are uniformly outstanding. Apocalypto was originally released in theaters in December of 2006 and distributed in the US by Buena Vista Pictures. Incredibly the film was nominated for only three technical Academy Awards, Best Achievement in Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Makeup. Apocalypto was produced by Icon Productions and Touchstone Pictures and released to DVD by Touchstone Home Entertainment Promotional photos are courtesy of the releasing studio.

Monday, June 4, 2007