“A great civilisation is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within” W. Durant
A polarising presence in Hollywood, Mel Gibson’s incredible journey in movies began as he broke through as a star in the Australian post-apocalyptic action thrill ride Mad Max (1979), before turns in sequels Mad Max 2 (1981) and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985) led him to the box office success of Lethal Weapon (1987) and Lethal Weapon 2 (1989).
He was unquestionably one of the biggest popcorn movie stars of the 1990s appearing in a string of hits including Air America (1990), Forever Young (1992), Maverick (1994) and Braveheart (1995) which was also produced and directed by the star. The success of Braveheart and of his Icon Entertainment production company would then lead onto two very notable turns behind the camera for Gibson in the following decade.
First with his controversial religious biopic covering the final days of Jesus in The Passion Of The Christ (2004), and then with Apocalypto (2006) his unique and beautifully shot action-adventure masterpiece, charting a tragic and violent story set within the Mayan civilisation of the early sixteenth century. And filmed with Native American and Indigenous actors on location in the Mexican rainforests, and with dialect based on the ancient Mayan language.
Gibson developed and wrote Apocalypto with screenwriter Farhad Safinia (The Professor and the Madman) and it was shot with an estimated budget of $40m (IMDB) grossing over $170m in return and receiving critical acclaim from a number of respected filmmakers including Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas) and Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction) who said “I think it’s a masterpiece and the best artistic film of that year.”
The movie opens as a slow camera zooms into the natural greenery of the jungle, before a charging wild boar breaks the serene calm with a number of hunters in pursuit. Eventually it is caught in a horrific spiked trap (something that we will reappear at the end of the film) and the Mayan hunters celebrate their kill by removing its organs and passing them around.
As they carve up their prey our main protagonist Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) becomes distracted as strangers emerge from the bushes. After a short but tense stand off the two tribes allow each other to pass without trouble, with the strangers telling Jaguar Paw that their lands have been ravaged and that they are seeking a new beginning, Jaguar Paw and his father Flint Sky return to their village with his father telling him he saw fear in the strangers eyes, and that Jaguar Paw must strike his own fear from his heart.
In a quintessential calm before the storm moment, we see the villagers enjoying a night together in peace and discover that Jaguar Paw lives an idyllic life with his pregnant wife Seven and their young son Turtles Run. The villagers sit around a campfire listening to an elder tell a story, before they party into the night with dancing and drumming … but in the morning horror will come!
The village is attacked at first light as Jaguar Paw is awakened from a nightmare in which the stranger he met the previous day stands before him with his heart in is hand telling him to “Run!” Jaguar Paw sees an army of raiders sneaking through the trees and soon they ambush, ransacking and burning huts, murdering and pillaging. The tribesmen that fight back are killed but others are captured and bound. Jaguar Paw escapes into the jungle with his wife and child and he lowers them deep into a well for safety, promising he will return for them before rushing back to the village to fight.
He engages in one to one combat with the vicious Middle Eye (Gerado Taracena) getting the better of the savage before he is captured from behind by the attacking hordes leader Zero Wolf (Raoul Max Trujillo). Impressed by the fight in his captive Zero Wolf forbids Middle Eye killing Jaguar Paw, who instead gets revenge for his beating by murdering his father in front of him. In his dying breath Flint Sky tells his son “Don’t be afraid,” before he is knocked unconscious by the snarling killer of his father, renaming him the offensive ‘Almost’.
This whole sequence takes your breath away and is a horrific scene that is shot beautifully by Gibson. The surviving villagers are bound and tied together to be taken on a mysterious journey. The raiders have spared the villages children who scream and cry together, not knowing what to do with themselves other than follow from a distance the procession of their captive adults, as they are led away from the scene of the devastation.
It transpires that the strangers tribe from the previous days encounter have also been captured and the children from both tribes to join together to follow and watch their parents being taken away. The sadistic Middle Eye takes great pleasure in beating Jaguar Paw during the journey, along with the sick who struggle to stay conscious during the long walk.
They are taken across a raging river and it is here the children stop following with the eldest girl shouting for her mother not to worry and that she will look after the babies “They are mine now!” The journey is perilous for the convoy as they navigate the rapids and then sheer cliff faces with Middle Eye taking pleasure in every obstacle his captives face. Thinking of his wife and child at the bottom of the well Jaguar Paw looks to the sky and prays is does not rain.
During the journey the group are almost hit by a falling tree before coming across a small girl covered in pox. The warriors are afraid of her sickness and keep their distance, but then she presents herself as some kind of seer and tells them that the sacred time of their death is near, warning “Beware the blackness of the day and the man who brings the Jaguar!”
Their journey takes them through chalk mines with hundreds of workers and then through burned jungle and fields of failed crops, vast landscapes captured wonderfully by Gibson who creates a real air of suspense as neither the captives nor the viewer know where they are being taken. Eventually they hit a densely populated town where chanting women cover the men in blue paint while the woman are separated to be sold as slaves.
The blue men soon realise they are being taken to their sacrificial deaths as they are led to a giant temple where decapitated heads are rolled down stone steps, as hundreds of people dance and chant below in a brutal ceremony for the gods. We see the hearts cut from the blue men and burned, before their heads are rolled and their bodies thrown to the crowds.
Jaguar Paw awaits his fate and thinks of his wife waiting for him, he is pulled to the sacrificial alter but before he is murdered the sun eclipses. This civilisation are sun worshippers and this is a monumental moment in their history with the priests taking the eclipse as a sign that their god is satisfied. The ritual ends saving the soul of Jaguar Paw at the eleventh hour, with the crowd rejoicing when the light eventually returns.
Zero Wolf is ordered to dispose of the remaining captives and they are taken to a clearing where one by one they are released and told to run to a corn field where they will find freedom. But as they run arrows, rocks and spears are fired at them. Jaguar Paw cleverly runs in diagonals but despite taking an arrow to the belly makes it to the cornfield after first killing the son of Zero Wolf in front of his father.
Half a dozen men led by Zero Wolf and Middle Eye follow Jaguar Paw into the jungle, but he takes refuge high up in a tree and watches as the hunters pass him by below. But he is not alone in the tree, and finds himself face to face with a Jaguar and her cub. He runs from the Jaguar towards his hunters who give pursuit, and in a grizzly scene we see the big cat pounce on one, clawing at his face and biting through his skull.
The rest of the hunters kill the wild beast but this gives Jaguar Paw the time to escape. The human hunt continues over night into the next morning where Jaguar Paw makes it back to the river arriving at the top of a waterfall. With his captors baring down on him he has no choice but to take a leap of faith into the water. Zero Wolf orders his men to follow as they see him survive the drop and swim away.
Jaguar Paw is now washed clean of the blue paint and he goads his hunters by shouting up telling them “This is my Forest … and I am not afraid. My father hunted in this forest before me, and sons will hunt here after I am gone.” Jaguar Paw starts to build traps in his jungle and turns the table by stalking his hunters. He launches a bee hive on them and makes poison darts from thorns and the venom from a frogs back.
He eventually comes face to face again with his nemesis Middle Eye, and this time he beats his foe to death. The rain begins to pour and Jaguar Paw runs to his family as his wife fights to try and free herself and her son from their subterranean prison. He finds them still alive but before he can help save them he must fight one final encounter, eventually taking out the colossus of Zero Wolf with the same trap used to capture the boar at the beginning of the film. While at the same time his wife gives birth to their baby which pops out under the rising water of the well.
There are two hunters left who chase Jaguar Paw to a beach where Spanish ships are mooring and row boats are bringing white men to the shore. He leaves the hunters staring in awe and rescues his family with the new born baby from the well, before they travel through the forest and away from the new threat to begin their new life together.
Apocalypto is a powerful, emotional and unique film like no other. The concept and delivery is an extraordinary achievement by Mel Gibson, visually stunning with grand cinematography that is beautiful on the eye, and a narrative that is perfectly paced throughout and with plenty of jaw dropping action. There is some fine Body-Horror within during some particularly gruesome and gory scenes, and for a desperate tale of survival and ultimately revenge … it ends on a thoroughly satisfying and heart warming note. KZ
Words by Mark Bates
kult-zilla.com 
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