Apocalypto

Mel Gibson is not the most subtle of film makers. But the flipside of that is that he knows how to captivate the audience with archetypes and striking imagery. Apocalypto plays out like a cinematic nightmare. Not that the film is bad– far from it. It’s just that much of Apocalypto has the quality of a bad dream: watching your village destroyed, your wife raped, lingering shots of decadent evil ‘city’ Mayans laughing at your misfortune, plague, fields of decapitated corpses, beating hearts ripped from bodies and relentless pursuit by armed enemies.


It’s all the stuff of nightmares. And it’s an effective, appropriate approach as nightmarish incidents are exactly what happen to lead character Jaguar Paw, a hunter who leads a contented life in the jungle with his pregnant wife, son and the rest of his tribe.

This peaceful existence is shattered when a band of slave traders raid Jaguar Paw’s home and he, and many of the other villagers, are dragged back to the ‘place built of stone’, the decadent Mayan city, to be ritually sacrificed.

You see, Mayan civilisation, even before the arrival of the Spanish, is failing. Plague, drought and starvation is crippling the city. To appease the gods, the high priests slaughter captured villagers (calling them willing warriors) while the disinterested royal family look on. Horrified by this world, Jaguar Paw must confront his fears and escape back home, sprinting through the jungle, to find his family.

And so begins the last act of the movie which plays out like Rambo: First Blood, set in the Guatemalan jungle. Certainly there are elements revealed that make Apocalypto a refreshing change of cinematic location, but essentially the film is a pretty conventional action movie.


This doesn’t however stop the film from being an entertaining, well-acted and ‘different’ diversion for 2 hours (it is also nowhere near as violent as audiences have been led to believe). Apocalypto is not perfect, but it succeeded in giving me nightmares, and for worming into my psyche like that, it certainly deserves credit.