--Oracle girl, Apocalypto
Mel Gibson might have at least in the past uttered irrational prejudices, but his filmmaking skill is very masterful. Apocalypto does not always have the best camerawork, but its cast, performances, setting, and themes cement its status as a great example of how to make a story set centuries ago relatable to moderners. Apocalypto, like Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge, is a very violent film, and that violence is necessary to make some of the points of the director and let the story unfold as its tone requires. Featuring excellent acting from people who had never acted before and an ending that so fittingly calls back to the opening, this is by far one of the better pseudo-historical movies of the last few decades. Mel Gibson has created a masterpiece that holds a mirror up to modern societies and illustrates how geographical locations and eras of time do not distinguish people as much as some might think.
Production Values
The Native American and Mexican cast does justice to the characters and dialogue all without even speaking in the language of American audiences. Subtitles convey their words, but it is the expressions, gestures, and vocal tones of the actors and actresses that carry the conversations and interactions between characters. Rudy Youngblood and Dalia Hernandez give just two of the superb performances as a husband and wife who find themselves separated after a group of city Mayans raids their village for slaves and sacrificial victims. A scene with a young oracle girl, which was the first acting role of the child actress and sets up important aspects of the remainder of the film, showcases how not even the young cast members seem out of place alongside their incredibly talented adult partners. With a story so driven by performances and themes, most of the effects are practical or minimal, which is all that Apocalypto truly calls for.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
The life of a group of Mayans is uprooted when the tribe is attacked by other Mayans, most of its people either killed or taken away for enslavement--or another purpose. Before reaching their city, the raiding Mayans are given a prophecy by a sick young girl who implies that one of their captives will bring the downfall of their corrupt society, promising that the sun will be blotted out and that this savior will be associated with the jaguar. Jaguar Paw, one of the captives, desperately wants to return to the wife and child he hid from the assailants, and he is narrowly saved by circumstance from the ritual human sacrifices carried out at the city of the invaders. A series of supposed bad omens point to the end of the oppressors as predicted by the diseased oracle girl.
Intellectual Content
From the starting scenes onward, the fact that the Mayans seen onscreen are very similar to modern people is evident in everything from their jokes to their trials. How expressions of humor and cruelty, like other traits, are handled goes very far in affirming that people are people, regardless of their culture, time in history, skin color, or gender. The victimized Maya tribe has its own subtly presented flaws, but in both this tribe and the aggressive city dwellers one can see that none of these other factors doom one to believe, act, or feel a certain way. Some of these Mayan practices are more problematic than others. For instance, the human sacrifices used as a political tool to placate the masses are portrayed as a grave injustice. Having nothing but the subjective feelings of conscience, the arbitrary and meaningless customs of tradition, and favored assumptions to support the practice, the city Mayans either carry out or collectively celebrate the killing of captives to appease a deity that they have no evidence is the uncaused cause.
This is actually one way that preying on and abusing people leads to the implied destruction of Mayan society that would come after the final scene. With the culture engaging in practices that distract from the core rot at the heart of the city and creating gratuitous division through mistreatment, the antagonists, despite having comparatively extreme wealth, set themselves up for annihilation. Mirroring the quote at the beginning about how a civilization cannot fall from external forces until it is inwardly weak, the arrival of the Spaniards at the end brings one of the central thematic ideas to the forefront after opening with it. Of course, a culture could be perfectly strong, free of illicit discimination, sadism, and injustice of every kind, and still fall to outward forces like an invader as long as the outward force was even more powerful, so the concept the quote conveys is objectively only situationally true. The fact remains they Apocalypto's civilization typifies how predatory norms can leave a group ripe for defeat.
Conclusion
Like with Parasite and Mel Gibson's own Passion of the Christ, the story and performances of Apocalypto are not hindered by the fact that only the subtitles are in English. That the language heard differs from English does not have to stop American viewers from appreciating Apocalypto's thematic and artistic triumphs. If anything, the difference in language is one of the smallest differences between the characters and modern people. Mel Gibson has even said that the point of the movie was to highlight some of the experiences and problems that many different cultures could relate to, and he certainly succeeds on this level and others. Apocalypto is a wonderfully acted affirmation of how all societies could succumb to the same destructive forces of cruelty, selfishness, apathy towards exploiting the environment, and using religious ideas as mere tools of control instead of philosophically valid or invalid (or logically poasible or impossible) concepts like all other beliefs.
Content:
1. Violence: The characters engage in sometimes brutal fights with close-range weapons or traps. People and animals are killed in bloody assaults or ritual sacrifices. In one scene, two captives have their hearts removed and heads cut off.
2. Profanity: Only the subtitles are in English, and only occasionally do words like "bastard" or "fucked" appear.
3. Nudity: The buttocks of the Mayans are regularly visible even with their customary clothing. Several women's breasts are very briefly shown.
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