Movie Review: "Apocalypto"
Category: Movies...
Posted Friday, December 08, 2006 at 04:39 PM [GMT-6]

Note: No plot spoilers are included in the following review, but the "Footnotes" at the end of this post do contain some minor spoilers. Be forewarned.

Think what you will about Mel Gibson and his personal indiscretions, large and small, the man can tell a story. He can also re-create a time and place as foreign as the surface of any distant planet and so immerse you in it that it becomes real, even if not necessarily comfortable.

The directorial and story-telling skills that Gibson brought first to Braveheart and then to The Passion of the Christ are powerfully displayed again in Apocalypto, which opened today to general release. My wife and I attended the first showing at the local multiplex, and we were riveted from the first scene to the last.

As an aside, let me say that I think the way the movie has been marketed is a mistake and will hurt the box office. The grand vision of the end of a civilization is hardly an appealing draw for the holiday movie-going public, and that vision isn't even a central part of Apocalypto's storyline. This movie is much more accessible than that, and it should have been marketed to play up the suspense and action that has an almost universal appeal.

You've no doubt heard the general plot: it's set in central America, presumably in the 16th century, just prior to the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. On a grand scale, it purports to show the beginning of the end of the mighty Mayan civilization (except that it never really ended...Maya peoples are today numbered in the millions). However, the collapse of an entire civilization is really too hard to capture in an entertaining way in a two hour movie, so Gibson has done the smart thing and made a movie about a small family whose travails provide manageable glimpses of the bigger story.

Is it violent and gory, almost to an extreme? Yes, no question about it. There will be a ongoing debate about whether the brutality was warranted (flashback to Passion). However, based on what I've read about the Aztec and Mayan cultures, what was shown on the screen is, if anything, understated compared to the reality. Human sacrifice was an accepted religious practice, and the source of many of those sacrifices was an extensive population of captives procured through raids and battles. For what it's worth, MLB was not put off by the violence, feeling (as did I) it to be a natural part of the societies and cultures being depicted. You'll have to decide for yourself if you want that kind of reality in your movie-going experience.

At times, the film is inexpressibly beautiful, especially the rainforest scenes. The action is fast-paced and suspenseful, and the occasionally heartbreaking story draws you in so completely that the subtitles are unnoticed. Overall, I rate Apocalypto as one of the best movies of the year, even as I acknowledge that it's not for everyone.

Footnotes (again, there ARE some spoilers in the following):

• I mentioned the subtitles above. One of the things I watch for in subtitled "period pieces" like this is the use of modern colloquialisms or anachronistic words or phrases. There were two in Apocalypto that stand out. One, the exasperated use of the word "mom" by a young bride trying to shoo her mother away from the front door of the hut where she and her husband are trying to make a baby (as demanded by the mother) seemed comfortably endearing; I suspect that every culture, past and present, has an equivalent word and the translation was fine in this case. The second was more problematic, as it involved the use of the "granddaddy of all swear words," if you know what I mean, and while it was definitely appropriate commentary for the scene it accompanied, it just seemed jarringly modern and unnecessary. I wonder about what, if any, discussion took place before they decided to use that word in the subtitles.


• Judging by the presumably accurate depiction of the Mesoamerican peoples, the vast majority of today's body piercing culture are a bunch of pansies.


• One aspect of Gibson's storytelling seemed highly derivative of an earlier movie. The "chase scene" through the jungle borrowed a number of elements from Steve McQueen's escape in the excellent 1973 movie, Papillion


• For those who worry about such things, unless you simply enjoy reading credits, there's no reason to sit in the theater after they start rolling, as there aren't any surprise features. I know you were wondering about that.


• Two separate zoos provided tapirs for the film. (As long as we were sitting through them, we might as well, you know, read the credits.)