Directed by: Mel Gibson
Starring: Rudy Youngblood
Rating:
So to recap, since 1993, Mel Gibson has directed films about the following four protagonists:
Justin McLeod, The Man Without a Face : A disfigured hermit (played by Gibson himself) who is hated and feared by the rest of his small East Coast town.
William Wallace, Braveheart: A Scottish freedom fighter (Gibson again) who is hated and feared—and eventually disemboweled—by the British.
Jesus Christ, The Passion of the Christ: A Nazarene carpenter (Jim Caviezel, although Gibson's hand is rumored to make a cameo at a key moment) who is hated and feared—and eventually crucified—by the Romans (with an assist from the Jews).
Jaguar Paw, Apocalypto: A hunter (Rudy Youngblood) who is hated and feared—and almost decapitated—by the Mayans.
Yeah, poor ol' Mel doesn't have a persecution complex at all.
Excuse me, I forgot that we're supposed to regard Apocalypto as a movie and not as a window into the inner workings of Gibson's mind. Well, pardon my French, but fuck that. After all, the best directors are those that allow their personalities to spill over into their work and while I hesitate to use the words "best director" and "Gibson" in the same sentence (even though he has an Oscar to that effect), he has developed into one of the more provocative American filmmakers working today. Who else would run off to the jungles of Mexico for a year to make a film about the fall of the Mayan Empire with a bunch of first-time actors? Even Terrence Malick has always had to rely on movie stars in order to get his esoteric visions financed.
That I consider Apocalypto to be Gibson's best film as a director really isn't such high praise when you consider the fact that I hated his last two movies and have only dim memories of his first. And I should be clear that I'm only a fan of the second half of this movie, when it abandons any attempts at seriousness and becomes a high-concept gloss on The Most Dangerous Game by way of Home Alone and Lord of the Flies. The first hour is dire stuff, with an opening sequence that contains such "hilarious" supporting characters as a nagging mother-in-law and a lot of locker-room wisecracks about the sexual prowess of a hunter who is shooting blanks. Apparently, Gibson believes that the audience will crack up at such "Mayans! They're just like us!" gags and I'm sorry to report that these scenes did inspire frequent laughter from the paying audience I saw the film with. Personally, all these moments did for me was confirm right off the bat that the director had no interest in examining who the Mayans were as a people.
This feeling grew stronger when Jaguar Paw and the rest of his village are captured by another tribe and marched through the woods to a neighboring city, where they are used as sacrificial offerings by the high priest. If you watch the way Gibson photographs this section, you'll notice all the leering faces and strange rituals he packs into the frame. These aren't the Mayans who invented a unique written language or devised advanced mathematic and astronomical systems. These are the Mayans who ripped the hearts out of their enemy's chests and bounced decapitated heads down the stairways of their temples. Gibson has very selectively chosen to show us their savagery while ignoring any other sides of their culture. It amazes me that audiences and even some reviewers are buying into this depiction of Mayan civilization as being somehow authentic, especially in light of the fact that Gibson has confessed to taking liberties with history. (He reportedly told a group of Mexican journalists, "A lot of it story-wise, I just made up.") Knowing this, the idea that we should treat Apocalypto as a thought-provoking rumination about the end of the Mayan Empire strikes me as simply laughable. By that reckoning, Revenge of the Sith is the most powerful statement against fascism ever made.
Apocalypto improves immeasurably when Gibson stops pretending that he's an intellectual artist and gets down to making the film he actually wanted to make: a balls-out rumble in the jungle. Thanks to the timely intervention of a solar eclipse, Jaguar Paw keeps his head and makes a daring escape into the forest, where he runs like mad back to his village where his pregnant wife and young son await his return. Hot on his heels are the members of the tribe that captured him and they're mightily pissed off that this runt has not only managed to escape, but he's also taken down several of their friends. What follows is a superbly executed game of cat-and-mouse, with Jaguar Paw designing all manner of clever traps to slow down his pursuers. Much has been made about the violence in this section of the movie and it's true that Apocalypto is more gruesome than your average action flick, where many more people die, but in distinctly non-bloody ways. As anyone who has seen Braveheart and The Passion knows, however, that's not the kind of screen violence Gibson prefers to depict. He likes giving audiences the sight of blood spurting from open wounds and letting us hear the sound of an arrow passing through someone's ribcage. In this particular context, I have to admit that I wasn't overtly bothered by his obsession with bloodletting. The movie is so close to being a cartoon anyway, the ultraviolence felt appropriate. Completely leaving aside any issues I have with Gibson's politics and personality, this section of Apocalypto is impressive action filmmaking that puts a lot of this year's bigger-budgeted blockbusters (I'm looking at you Poseidon and Pirates of the Caribbean) to shame. It doesn't make up for the inane first half, but it does point towards the kind of films that Gibson should perhaps be making.
