The Four Horsemen of Apocalypto (Spoily)

[Content warning: Contains spoilers]

Put simply, Apocalypto is a very fine movie.  It's not exactly Braveheart, nor The Patriot, nor The Passion.  But it's not far off.  It definitely warrants a slot in the box set of gruesome Gibson epics.  And I do mean that as a compliment.

It earns that berth not only by virtue of its overall quality, but because it just oozes Gibsonishness (as established by the three other titles) at every turn.

Going in, I frankly wasn't sure whether I was going to enjoy it.  My concerns were four-fold.  While the movie promised plenty of war, pestilence, famine, and death, I wasn't so keen on the subtitles, the setting, the Bush administration "fearmongering" allegory, or the inevitably heavy-handed vilification of the white settlers.

First and foremost, I was put off by the reading requirement.  I suppose it's impressive to shoot a movie entirely in such an obscure language, but for me, the distraction trumps the authenticity.  For me, it didn't add anything to The Passion and I didn't expect it to do Apocalypto any favors (which, for my money, it didn't).  But it was a tolerable distraction, as there was frankly not a lot of dialogue.  Plus, I sat toward the front, so it was effectively in something like 1,000 point font.

Second, I wasn't sure I was going to be able to get behind this specific struggle in any kind of meaningful way.  Rooting for the fledgling Americans in The Patriot was a no-brainer.  Likewise in Braveheart, while the conflict was a little further removed from our immediate temporal and national context, Wallace et al were struggling for freedom from the oppressive English.  Add to either backdrop a few well-timed slaughterings of the protagonist's family members and you've got a nice personal vendetta story set against a patriotic macro-struggle that stirs up sufficient bloodlust that we the audience can really enjoy the occasional hatchet to the face, decapitating cannon ball, or broadsword bifurcation.

With this offering, I just wasn't convinced I was going to be able to muster enough emotional investment in the fate of one Mayan tribe versus another.  Thankfully, Mel too seemed to realize that Apocalypto's A-plot might not be enough on its own to inspire us to choose up sides in a ruthless rumble in the jungle, no matter how cinematically magnificent.

Enter the B-plot.  You've seen it before, almost to a tee, if you've seen the rest of the box set.  A peaceful tribe with strong family and social structures (and cunning tapir-hunting skills) is invaded by a distinctly unpeaceful tribe.  Our Hero, Jaguar Paw, gets our vengeful buy-in in a scene extremely reminiscent of the death of Murron Wallace in Braveheart.  At roughly the same point in the plot arc, with roughly the same impact that the magistrate kills Wallace's wife in Braveheart, so too does the colonel kill Martin's son in The Patriot, as Snake Ink slits Jaguar Paw's father's throat in Apocalypto.  And if you're still wanting for justification for the bloodbath that follows, JP's wife, son, and unborn son are all hiding (though now trapped) in a deep well/cave back at the homestead, while the invading tribe leads the surviving tribes people away in shackles.

So in addition to striving for FRREEEEEEDOMMMM, the protagonist's struggle is now one of avenging his father's death and getting home soon enough to save his lovely family before it rains and they presumably drown.  Some reviewers have noted the apparent anachronism resulting from the juxtaposition of the waning days of the Mayan civilization (distinctly a first millennium phenomenon) with the arrival of Spanish conquistadors (which followed many centuries later).  To me, the more nagging nitpick was the fact that people float.

Certainly with the help of a little water-treading, keeping the lungs full, maybe grabbing onto the odd root or a craggy rock on the wall, I'd expect most people (especially outdoorsy 9th Century types) would survive a very slowly rising water level until they ultimately popped out of the well.  To the contrary, as the water rises up to head level, Mrs. Paw is forced to feel around for a small rock on the floor of the well/cave, upon which to stand to buy a little more time.

While all this is going on somewhere below the now burned out settlement, Paw is off sating our bloodlust.  The invaders take the captives back to Maya's Capital City, which essentially consists of a slave mart, a hard labor camp, and a town square of pyramids down the slopes of which the royals bowl severed heads and headless bodies for the enjoyment of the townsfolk.

This ushered in the third threat to my enjoyment.  Months ago, Gibson likened the "fearmongering" of the Mayans to the Bush administration's MO.  So I was waiting to be beaten over the head with this message.  And while that aspect was unambiguous, it was brief and not a particularly strong parallel.  The ruling Mayans have scheduled a particularly bloody bout of head-and-headless-corpse bowling on the day of a solar eclipse.  As the moon obscures the sun, they announce that they have finally appeased the thirst of the gods, who they're quick to note could smite them at any time if not so appeased.  So, fine, I suppose (given Mel's explicit comparison) that we're to notice that rulers can justify their barbarism by instilling phantom fears among their people.  Great.  Moving on.

What struck me as most unusual about this part of the story (which was the height of savagery of the film and the culmination of the journey that accounts for most of the plot) was not the political message, but the sheer inefficiency of the Mayan slave trade.  A few are sold at auction upon returning to Capital City, others are set free for being too old and female, and the remaining handful are dragged to the top of the pyramid for sacrifice.  Once the eclipse has come and gone, the remaining captives are taken away to participate in a deadly game of Skewer the Fleeing Slaves With Various Projectiles. To everyone's horror, Paw wins his round, killing the ruler's son, and setting off in the jungle to save his apparently unbuoyant family from the coming rains.

But even if all had gone according to plan, the several days' worth of travel and bloody battle required to fetch these few slaves seemed like an awful lot of work, particularly as none of them seemed to be put to any productive use (and even more particularly as the outskirts of the central city seemed to be brimming with forced labor already).

Anyway, those nitpicks aside, the journey is creatively gruesome (death comes calling not only via the typical bludgeoning and carving (of which there's plenty), but also by jaguar de-facing, waterfall plummeting, and run-ins with snakes, hornets, and tapir traps) and surprisingly satisfying in that Gibson way we've come to know and love.

As we near the end of the journey, Paw's efforts to rescue his family are beset once more by his two surviving pursuers.  They chase him out of his camp and down to the beach, whereupon the fourth and final threat to my enjoyment of the movie appears on the horizon.  Three large ships have dropped anchor and some away parties are rowing their way toward shore.  The sheer spectacle of it all induces the bad guys to simply gawk seaward, allowing Paw to hustle on back toward the slowly filling well/cave, while his aspersers presumably go on to make some bad land deals and contract malaria.

That said, there's no further implication of the evils to follow; we don't see any interaction with the Europeans and their total screen time lasts all of a few seconds.  The movie opens with the Will Durant quote "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within" so we can safely assume that the Mayans are hereafter conquered by these time-traveling Spaniards, but the white man vilification I'd expected was at most an implicit epilogue, rather than any significant plot feature.

All in all, my concerns were poorly placed and Gibson delivered brilliantly.  With this film, he's cemented not only his capacity as a director, but also an increasingly distinct filmmaking style.  The parallels to his three other movies mentioned above (I realize he didn't direct The Patriot, but I say it still belongs in the box set) are strong on a number of levels and begin to form a fairly cohesive larger body of work in Gibson's career over the last decade.  If his recent personal and legal troubles cause Hollywood or audiences to shy away from this or any future Gibson projects, it'll be their loss.  This movie certainly isn't for everyone, but it delivers precisely what one expects it to deliver, based on his recent projects.  Anyone who enjoyed Braveheart and The Patriot should enjoy Apocalypto for exactly the same reasons.  Anyone who didn't enjoy them, well, there's always The Holiday.

Elsewhere:
Hot Air serves up the mildly amusing Apocalypto trailer remix from this week's SNL.
John Hawkins reviews.