Apocalypto

I didn’t see this movie when it was in theatres. I wanted to; I just didn’t get around to it. When it first came out on DVD, I put it in my Netflix cue. It sat there in the number one position for a long time, with the “very long wait” qualifier attached. I finally received it yesterday (nearly two and a half months later). Thanks Netflix. Part of the wait was probably due to the fact that I wanted it on Blu-Ray. If any movie is a candidate for a high-definition viewing experience, this is it.

Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto is quite an experience. I was amazed at how I felt transported into a foreign time and place to witness a brutal tale of survival and conquest. The only other movie to achieve this feat in a similar matter is Terrence Malick’s The New World. Apocalypto tells the story of the Mayan civilization near the end of its existence in the 16th century. The story begins with a group of hunters stalking a tapir in the jungles of its homeland. They set up some traps that eventually ensnare their prey (it gets impaled on some rather large spikes). One of the members of the hunting party, Jaguar Paw, doles out various parts of the animal to the group. One guy gets the heart, another gets the liver, and one gets the balls. The guy who gets the balls is told that if he eats them, he will finally be able to conceive a child (he has been having difficulty with this, to the amusement of his tribesmen and the ire of his mother-in-law). Are you wondering if it actually shows him eating the balls? Of course it does. After all, this is Mel Gibson’s movie and from your previous experience with his films, you know that he never shortchanges his audience when it comes to gore (i.e. Braveheart and Passion of the Christ). This scene made me not hungry. I stayed that way for the rest of the film.

Another group of Mayans comes across the hunters. This group looks worn-out and terrified. They are carrying some big fish. They claim that their village has recently been attacked and that they are moving on to begin their lives again somewhere else. This idea of “starting anew” becomes the major theme of the movie. Our group of hunters soon returns to its own village. They reunite with their wives and families. They play practical jokes on each other and dance and have an all-around good time. They are a peaceful, fun-loving tribe. Jaguar Paw meets up with his pregnant wife and young son. We sense their impending doom.

The next morning, a group of marauding Mayan warriors attacks the village, beating the men and women, tying most of them up, and killing those who resist. Jaguar Paw sees them coming and takes his wife and child to a deep well, where he lowers them to safety. He goes back to help his tribesmen in the fight, but is quickly captured. The Mayan attackers are well armed with obsidian clubs, spears, and arrows and are covered in tattoos, scarification, and facial adornments. They are fucking scary. This scene, along with other fight scenes in the film, is extremely brutal.

The captives are tied together on long poles and forced to march through the jungles and across a river, their destination unknown to them. The situation starts to get really bizarre as they approach a Mayan city. A diseased girl makes some dire predictions for the attackers, using a creepy, whispery voice. These predictions involve jaguars, day as night, death, etc. A group of slaves is working a mine or quarry of some sort--all of them covered from head to toe in white dust, some throwing up blood. There are women adorned in jade and colorful clothing. The women-captives are auctioned off to the highest bidder. The men-captives are painted blue and led toward a large Mayan pyramid, where heads are bouncing down the steep, stone steps. Their fate is to be sacrificed to the Mayan gods in supplication for rain and wealth by priests who wear ceremonial masks, feathered headdresses, and jade jewelry.

As the movie continues, the scenes get tenser and more violent. Our hero, Jaguar Paw, needs to get back to his wife and child. This is his only desire, his only goal. But, he is on-deck, awaiting his turn to have his still-beating heart ripped out of his chest…

I really enjoyed this movie. Some of it was difficult to watch (even for me, a horror movie aficionado) due to the violence. The entire movie is subtitled, which adds to its believability. The set design is astonishing—they actually built the Mayan temples you see in the film. The costumes and make-up are convincing. The few flaws I found in this movie are a couple of attempts at humor that I didn’t find funny and a scene where a group of Mayans are gathered at the foot of the pyramid and one of them is crowd-surfing. I don’t think I’d be crowd-surfing to a spectacle of decapitated heads. That’s a little too X-treme for me.

Regardless of Mel Gibson’s personal faults, he is one crazy-ass, visionary director. I hope he remains sane and sober long enough to give us more movies like Apocalypto.

PS: There is a scene in this movie where (spoiler) a guy gets his face eaten by a jaguar. It is an intense, face-biting scene. For another really cool and hilarious face-biting scene, see the movie Abominable.

Addendum: Correlations Between the Book of Mormon and Apocalypto—Just For Fun

There are none. The Mayans in Apocalypto don’t have horses, chariots, or steel swords. The Lamanites in the Book of Mormon ride horses (some Mormon apologists claim that the horse described in the Book of Mormon is really a tapir and that the tapirs were ridden like horses…no one rides tapirs in Apocalypto), use chariots in warfare, and wield steel swords. To be fair, this movie takes place in the 16th century and the Book of Mormon only covers events up to around the 5th century. Maybe these Mayan descendants of the Lamanites killed all their horses and forgot how to build chariots and make steel. Maybe Mel Gibson didn’t get his history right. Maybe the Book of Mormon’s history isn’t right. Who knows? God knows (if God exists). But that’s an issue for a different movie, like Passion of the Christ or something.