Apocalypto - A Movie Review

I went to Mel Gibson’s movie Apocalypto, on Saturday, and I am very glad I did. It took the long lonely ride home from Logan to sort it out, but I now declare it the best movie I’ve seen in a long, long time. Five stars – that’s on a scale of one to four! There was great violence, as there was in the world Gibson sought to portray, but none of it was gratuitous. Like the beauty of the jungle, man’s inhumanity to man, could only reveal its full potency if portrayed realistically.

What make’s Gibson’s movie a success?

First - he made us care about the characters. The first scenes of the film immerse us in a pre-Columbian world where family and friends bring happiness to each other and so to us; where success is measure by the care one gives one’s family. The ways are different but the goal is eternally the same. When the monster of religious insanity crashes down on Jaguar Paw and his beautiful family, it is as if they had come for our own. Though I have never been in a Central American Jungle, never experienced the life here depicted, and although I had to read all their words in the subtitles, I felt I knew, even was one of, the people in the story. Gibson did this within minutes; what a master.

Secondly - beauty; Gibson’s baroque masterpiece brings the struggles and terrors of a village of people in custom and dress so beyond our taste and experience that it is at first shocking, to the level of high art. Art that is moving as it crashes into one’s senses, art that is inspired by the power of its truth. As we get to know them, we are inspired by the physical appearance of the actors, the characters that people Gibson’s creation. And as we see their beauty the wonder of their humanity is overpowering. Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) is beautiful, as are his wife and son. The beautiful children shown throughout the movie give visual testimony of the link between the good, the beautiful and the true. Gibson understands the magic of the physically beautiful and is not afraid to conjure with it.

Thirdly, Gibson allows, or rather the history he portrays allows, a clear line to be drawn between good and evil. There is no justification of the irrational murder of tens of thousands of innocents to appease the mindless sun. In the Mayan/Aztec monster cultures Gibson reveals there is nothing redemptive. Gibson has finally found Hitler’s equal in the Jungles of Mezzo America. On the other hand, the primal drive of family love, to care for wife and child and honor parents are simply and powerfully presented and stand in redemptive contrast to the hollow and murderous ceremonies of false and unreasoning religion.

Finally, Gibson’s movie speaks to universal truth. The sacrifice of the sacred king abused to its most egregious and profane extent by the misled mindlessness of the murder cult of the Mayan religion. The sacrifice of the sacred king shown at its most true and beautiful as a father struggles for his family, as friend sacrifices all for friend, as love motivates the miracle. Gibson ties masterfully into great literature and portrays scenes from great books in ways movie makers attempting to present the entire stories have failed. When the little girl pronounces the doom of the Mayan corruption, one expects her description of “he who brings the jaguar” to end with her intoning, “Because he is the Kwisatz Haderach!” When Jaguar Paw runs out onto the beach, the savages with their sharpened sticks in hot pursuit; it is perfectly natural to find Golding’s “adults” at hand. The struggle of right against wrong, the even deeper story of the struggle between truth and falsehood drive this movie, this piece of art, set in an ancient culture, into the struggles of the 21st century, into the epoch struggle of all men.

As we left the theater I discussed the film with my son and a best friend. My son’s family is exactly like Jaguar Paw’s. He has a tiny son and a second about to be born. He was quiet and reflective, the parallel to his beloved family and lives the movie had portrayed too close for words. It was my other young friend, who also defends and cares for his family with all the love, devotion, and courage of Jaguar Paw, whose wise words brought out three powerful and universal truths. His first words were, “How wonderful to live in a land of law, a land where law protects us from the evil of others.”

He them went on to point out how the movie had instructed us that evil must be faced. We cannot run from it, it will always flood to the limits that it is allowed to flow. The folly of those who would distance themselves from the false religion driven mass murderers of today, who would run into the woods and hope that evil will pass them by, will in due time be forced to face it. It will come for their families.

Finally, my friend had seen most clearly a moment in the film that had not yet coalesced for me. He related the moment where Jaguar Paw realizes that he must fight, although the odds are terrible and he is weary and wounded; the words of his father come to him, and he resolves not to be afraid. He takes the war for the survival of his family and for his way of life to his enemy; he becomes the hero, a brown, tattooed, and bare chested Achilles in the Jungles of the Yucatan.