Apocalypto (2006)

USA
directed by: Mel Gibson
written by: Mel Gibson, Farhad Safinia
starring: Rudy Youngblood, Jonathan Brewer, Dalia Hernández, Raoul Trujillo
seen: 20th July, 2009, comment reworked: 30th August, 2017

I wasn't sure I ever wanted to see anything else tainted by the craft of the mad blue eyed wonder after "The Passion of the Christ". But Native Americans are my long term love, stretching through all possible narrative arts and media. I've been serching for a proper A-list film I would approve of, especially because "The Last of the Mohicans" left me horrified and "Dances with wolves" only met some of my conditions. And in this way Apocalypto had me deeply pleased.

I am not an expert in history so I don't aspire to state how much of the movie is real (truth reflecting) and where did Gibson wondered into fantasy land. From my amateur point of view I can say that nothing in the film struck me as stupid or illogical. Mel's signature style of expressivity, pathos and black-and-whiteness is showing once more, but this time he uses it more precisely and has me completely hooked. The overall look of the film had me fascinated, as did all the natural performances of  (non)actors with the utterly charismatic Rudy Youngblood in the lead. His way of speaking with his eyes is something a lot of professionals should be jealous of.

Truth be told, I would never expeted Mel to come up with an amazing hero's journey about believing in oneself and the need of symbiosis with nature, but he did. I was also surprised and amused by him using the "deus ex machina" storytelling devise and hiding additional meanings behind it. The first instance of a higher power altering hero's fate is the solar eclipse. The eclipse saves him from a situation where he himself could do literally nothing. But it wasn't the hand of god who let him go, it was a calculated trick by the king and his closest to manipulate the mindless mass of subjects. The ruler knows very well that the eclipse is coming and when his benevolent gesture brings the sun back, his subjects have no other choice that to believe in his unlimited powers. The other touch of god from the machine is the ending itself. The arrival of Christians sways the attention of hunters and the hero can safely return to his family. But the educated viewer of course knows the horrors brought by european civilisation upon native populations and knows this happy ending isn't the end (let alone happy) and that from this point on the hero, his hunters or their king won't ever ever safe again.

Just like I looked up after "The Passion" what the Jewish community thinks abou it, I searched for reviews and articles with opinions from descendants of idigenous american inhabitans on Apocalypto. There were both positive and negative reactions I could understand. One reproach accused the film of intolerance because it supposedly portrays the Mayans as violent savages that can only be saved by whites from Europe. Maybe I cannot assess this completely objectively, but personally I find the reproach to be a bit unfair, or rather unsubstantiated. The film shows a wide spectrum of social classed from Mayan society and presents everybody simply as humans, not as an exotic attraction in a white story (and that's what "The Last of the Mohicans" does, gods of all religions damn that film). The white conquerors shown at the end are not assigned any attributes or qualities, positive or negative, there's no comment on their role, just that the hero decides not to approach them. And I sincerely hope that Mel did not intended them to be understood as saviours.

P.S.: From the first time I saw it, I thought that the figure on the poster is the main protagonist fleeing the harm's way, but it's Middle Eye, the cruelest of the head hunters and the main antagonist to our hero. Who would have thought.