APOCALYPTO – A Review

Before I start with the review, I would start by concurring with a large variety of reviewers that Mel Gibson better remain behind the camera than in front. He is a class behind and an embarrassment in front.

The movie starts with a quote by the great historian Will Durant: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." That is the theme of the movie. For two and a half hours Mel Gibson presents the audience the collapse of a civilization and how it was so easy for the Spaniards to conquer present day Mexico.

The movie addresses this central philosophy pretty well. It presents to us a dichotomy in the Mayan society – the laissez-faire rural society and slavish industrial urban society. The rural society represented by its protagonist Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) explains it very well – “this is my jungle, my father hunted here, I hunt here and my son will hunt here.” You may call it the primitive hunter-gatherer crowd but it was the Free Society as represented by Rousseau, Condorcet and Voltaire. On the other hand we see a near-slavish urban society controlled by its priest class with its bloody sacrifices. It is the clash between the societies that underscores the movie. It also shows how society is in tension between the controllers who have no regard for human lives and the ordinary people who want to carry on daily their lives.

The movie is in Yucatec – a Mayan language with English subtitles. Accordingly, the casts are non-celebrities and mostly Native Mayans from Mexico. Rudy Youngblood does an excellent job as Jaguar Paw. Dalia Hernández as Seven (Jaguar’s wife) mesmerizes the audience not only with her sultry beauty but also her acting skills depicting fear and survival actions. We hope to see more of them in the coming movies.

The movie starts with simple jungle life. A tapir is killed and the body parts distributed including everything. The element of practical jokes of the jungle life is displayed. Also the quintessential element of village life - sitting down around fire hearing the village elders tell a tale – was excellently displayed. So the first half an hour of the movie was spent in immersing the audience in an atmosphere of Mayan village.

Except one small incident. During the hunt they encountered a group that are trying to flee so as to “escape to start a new life”. They had fear in their faces. We did not understand the meaning of this till next day morning when there was an attack on the village.

It was half an hour since the start, the idyllic nature of the movie came to a gory end. We see a band or royals come and take the villagers as prisoners. Jaguar Paw too is taken but not before hiding his pregnant wife, Seven (Dalia Hernández) and young son (Carlos Emilio Baez), in a deep crevice.

The prisoners are taken to the Mayan capital by the leader of the warriors - Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo). The passage gives us a good visualization of the countryside and also the Maya city. If you are seeing the movie please see this part very closely. We are presented with a very good picture of the urban Mayan civilization with all the pomp. Also the transition from the prehistoric rural culture to the urban culture was also pretty cool!

They are the taken to the central temple for sacrifice to the gods. The scene was quite gory with the heart being pulled out of the stomach with the victim still alive. However, thanks to a interesting melodramatic event the sacrifices are stopped and the prisoners disposed of. I don’t want to say any more as it would be “spoiling” but since the storyline is very well known, I don’t know now much I could “spoil”.

Before I come back to the theme, I would make a cursory look back to my own history of India. In around sixth century BC, India too was ravaged by the priest class who performed large-scale animal sacrifices to appease the gods. This led to the rise of opposing and anthropocentric schools of thought. Furthermore, decay of Indian society in the tenth century AD and the eighteenth century led to Islamic and British invasions. We see that the armies who could ward off the powerful Hun invasions and match Alexander the Great could not handle Islamic and British invasions. Clearly, we see that in Indian History whenever the society was fragmented and destroyed from within there was a foreign invasion that succeeded. Will Durant was right.

The Mayan civilization lasted from circa 1500BC to the Spanish arrival in 1520AD. It was a civilization lasting for nearly three thousand years. During this time, its advances in Mathematics, architecture, astronomy are not only great but in some cases unparalleled. Its astronomy was one of the most accurate in the world not to mention recognizing the Orion nebula as a nebula (strong eyes?) without the use of a telescope. So the question remains how come such a great civilization come crashing down.

The answer is given and explained in the movie. The Mayans were killing its own citizens to service the gods to have the Sun to rise and the drought removed. And therein lies the political message in this movie.

So what is the western civilization doing? It is sacrificing its young for the Oil gods while an invasion is underway. This is possible the subtle political message that is creating storm over tea-cups. If it is so then it is very starkly put.

Like all roses the move has thorns too but real sharp ones. The violence and the blood-shed in the movie is really “over the top”. Please don’t see the movie with your children even though they should (as future citizens) get the message.

Last but not the least, the village elder/storyteller emphasizes one central weakness of Man – his greed. We fear that his greed will outrun the earth. That is what the owl said that he saw a deep hole in Man and that cannot be filled by his wants. Another brutal message right in the beginning telling us that the movie would be really heavy.

I tend to come back the theme always. What would be the future of our (neoliberal) civilization. A civilization one hand interconnected via the web, via increasing trade and people to people contacts yet increasingly fractious with national and religious demagoguery. Would a new anthropocentric movement would save the day OR we shall the civilization descend into destruction with within.

What will be forthcoming? Nous verrons!

For trailer please click here. Please choose the High definition with size appropriate to your screen size.