WhatzUp

Apocalypto
by Derek Neff

APOCALYPTO

I'm convinced that the critical praise for Apocalypto might not have been so half-hearted and wavering if it hadn't been made by a superstar who went off on an anti-Semitic rant while being arrested for drunk driving a few months before its release. I'm not saying I feel sorry for Mel Gibson by any means; I don't. After all, the full title of the film is Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, and whatever harm befalls the film as a result of Gibson's own benighted misdeeds must fall squarely on his head. I know that I for one had no plans to see a movie made by someone capable of saying the kinds of things Gibson had said to his arresting officer.

But then – several months, hundreds of tabloid stories and thousands of late-night TV jokes later – I relented. I guess I eventually realized that many worthy novels, paintings, songs and poems throughout history have been made by artists who have occasionally said and done things that were morally repugnant, and that, further, if I had to read every artist's bio before deciding their life was "good enough" for me to enjoy their work, I'd be an awfully busy (and annoyingly sanctimonious) guy. If art has the power to exalt us – and I believe it does – then perhaps it also has the power to exalt the person who makes it. To judge a work by the low-water marks of an artist's life is a tricky proposition at best, and one I realized I'm not comfortable making.

Which all brings us, after some rather lengthy throat-clearing, to the film itself. And it is a doozy, regardless of who directed it. Taking place just before the fall of the Mayan civilization in the 16th century, Apocalypto is essentially the story of one family's struggle to survive through desperate circumstances. It is also a gripping, heart-pounding action yarn that never lets up once it gets rolling. You'll eventually forget you're reading subtitles; you'll forget you're watching a movie made by the wild-eyed man whose mug shot you saw all over the news a few months ago. Heck, you'll forget that you're sitting in your living room watching a movie called Apocalypto. Like all great films, the experience of watching it is vivid, immediate, propulsive and transporting.

There's been some controversy about Gibson's depiction of the Mayans as "savage," but I don't see that. So much has been made of hearts being pulled still beating out of people's chests that many have ignored the film's other beating heart: the community of villagers seen at the beginning of the movie are close-knit, fondly teasing, language-centered, family-oriented and loyal to the core. Even the more villainous Mayans who appear later in the film are not without their own recognizably human motives.

The first time we realize we're watching something truly special is about 20 minutes into the movie, when a small group of relatively peaceful Mayan villagers gathers at a bonfire to hear the village elder tell a tale. After he's finished, someone begins beating drums, and the villagers all rise and begin to dance. The camera's fluid movement through the joyous crowd of dancers is nothing short of breathtaking.

In the movie's heartbreaking second act the village is raided by the Mayan central army, which gathers up as many of the men and women as it can, the men to be used as a sacrifice to the Mayan gods, the women to be sold into slavery (the children are left behind to fend for themselves). One villager, Jaguar Paw, has the wherewithal to lower his son and pregnant wife by rope into a small but deep hole in the ground, but he can't avoid being captured himself. He spends the rest of the movie trying to make his way back to his family before they either starve or are drowned after the first strong rain.

To reveal any more about what Jaguar Paw, his wife and son and his fellow villagers encounter along the way – the horrors and atrocities as well as the miraculous saves – would be to deny you the same suspense and surprises that await anyone lucky enough to have seen the movie "cold."

The sets, costumes and make-up are painstakingly detailed and apparently well researched. The scenes taking place within the Mayan city are especially convincing and impressive. No movie this detailed and grandiose is without its excesses, though. I, for one, would have preferred a more minimal, toned-down score than the intrusive one provided here by composer James Horner. The movie also resorts to a few too many polished visual tropes – the camera swoops and swerves nimbly around, but it does so in ways we've seen in many recent big-budget movies – but that's also largely a matter of taste. Neither the music nor the camera work come close to distracting us from the remarkable work as a whole.

Apocalypto is at times brutally violent, but I don't think it's gratuitously so. To spare us the sometimes sickening, bone-crunching details would be to cause too much confusion about what is going on. (Anything we can easily guess at, such as the raping that occurs during the raid on the village, Gibson mercifully leaves to our imagination.) Once the captured villagers are brought to the capital city for sacrifice, what happens to them cannot be hinted at: we have to see it for ourselves.

But despite its unusual setting, its unfamiliar language and its sometimes extreme violence, Apocalypto is essentially a mainstream entertainment, a thrill ride through and through, one made by a confident, able storyteller working from an impressive screenplay (which Gibson co-wrote with Farhad Safinia) with the intent of transporting us to a time and place we've never been before, giving us in the process an experience we won't soon forget.

Derek Neff lives in Muncie.