Apocalypto

One must totally forget and ignore that Apocalypto (2006) was made by Mel Gibson, whose anti-Semitic ravings have of late made him a pariah in the popular press and elsewhere. One must also forget that the director of this film is the same director who made The Passion. So much controversy and furor swirl around Gibson and The Passion that they might well prevent us from seeing Apocalypto on its own grounds. At some point, of course, we must bring the issues of biography and of other films to bear on this one, but not too soon.

The title Apocaypto obviously implies a story about apocalypse, and as the opening scenes suggest it applies to the small settlement of apparently Mayan villagers who live in idyllic simplicity in the middle of the central or South American jungle. They are overrun by a murderous and more powerful tribe of Mayans. Some are killed and others are taken captive, intended either for slavery or for sacrifice.

The film begins with a quote from Will Durant, the popular historian: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." The quote apparently has little to do with the tribe of villagers whose life is upturned by the murderous Aztecs. It may apply, however, to the Mayans themselves, so overwhelmed as they are by the need for blood sacrifice, the tyranny of a few members of a ruling class that holds power and wealth and that enslaves a multitude of others to do their bidding. Their inner corruption may well bring them down.

The plot of this film, despite all the pretense, is simple. A man named Jaguar Paw is kidnapped away from his family. He must escape his captors and return to save his family whom he has left, perhaps without thinking things out too carefully, in a deep pit. His wife is nine-months pregnant, his son is five years old and unable to help her. In the climactic scenes of the film, it is raining, the pit is filling with water, the wife is in the final stages of labor, and the man must get to them in time. Clearly one basic theme is this film is family, and the notion that numerous external forces threaten its existence. Saving his wife and child is Jaguar Paw's sole motivating goal. A corollary theme is that of place—when Jaguar Paw leads his pursuers back to the forest of his village, he then feels he is on home grounds, where he and his father hunted, and he is empowered as a result to bring those hunting skills to bear on his pursuers.

The scenes that show the idyllic lives of the villagers early in the film are so reminiscent of similar scenes early in Gibson's Braveheart that one must wonder whether Apocalypto is another version of that film. A key character in each scene dies from having his or her jugular vein sliced through. And in fact the two films have much in common. I see less of a connection with The Passion, though clearly there are links. Much has been made of the brutal violence of Apocalypto, though in compassion to many other recent films it doesn't seem excessive.

The second apocalypse in this film comes into view when Jaguar Paw and the last two surviving pursuers run onto the beach and see Spanish vessels that have just arrived. They are the agents of an apocalypse that will change everything for all these Mayans. Jaguar Paw and his family flee into the jungle, and, everything considered, including what we know as modern viewers about what will soon happens to the Mayan culture because of these new arrivals, that is probably the best place for them to head.

Ultimately one has to wonder whether the philosophical and political trappings of this film, that make it out to be a commentary on history and culture and the events that cause civilizations to pass away, really matter in the face of the blood, the violence, and the family theme. After all is said and done, the only important question in the film and its focus on the suspenseful efforts of Jaguar Paw to escape his pursuers is whether he does succeed in escaping and rescuing his family. The arrival of the Spaniards, the Mayan blood fest that forms the central and excessive heart of the spectacle in this film, are all really secondary and irrelevant to Jaguar and his family.