Apocalypto

I know Mel Gibson has been acting completely koo-koo since Passion of Christ but I’ve got to say, putting his personal life aside, I’m a HUGE fan. He is talented, he knows his work and he takes risks. I mean, most hollywood people would have done a movie about the Mayas spoken in english - which would have ruined it - but he didn’t, even if it meant the movie would have a much narrower audience. Plus, Braveheart is a massive part of why I’ve grown up to work with movies.

Apocalypto is about the struggle of a Maya man to survive so he can save his family after the attack from some other Maya tribe.

It helped me a lot with my History tests back in High School, because it has lots of what my teacher taught us about the Maya people, like the fact that among Astecas and Incas they were the only ones who actually had a chance of defeating the Spanish, but they had already destroyed themselves with so many inside conflicts - which is the center of the plot-, also the fact that the Mayas were the only ones who reconized the Spanish as men and not Gods - that too is very clear in the movie.

I remember the critics talked a lot about how bloody it was and almost nothing about how meaninful it is. In fact, they went on and on so much about it that when I actually watched it I was like ‘OK, I see blood, but where’s the BLOOD?’. There is a lot of blood on it, but so there is on Tarantino’s movies and no one ever talks about it, they don’t even seem to notice it (the sound of  nazis being scalplessed in Unglorious Bastards still haunts me!). So don’t get too caught up on it that you forget the plot and the message behind it. I was so touched by Jaguar Paw love for his family that I barely saw all the blood they talked about.

In fact, when you really think about it, love it’s what moves the story. There’s also some other great lessons about men and civilization. It shows both sides, how far men can go for power and how much men can take for love.

Give it a chance, it’s a lot deeper than you may think. Just open your mind and heart to take in the real message.


“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”