hollywood hues
History as excuse

The locales in Apocalypto are visually satiating. The film brings out man’s baser instincts, but it is unduly gory, writes Ervell E. Menezes

Speak of ancient civilisations and how they vanished—there are a number of them—but Mel Gibson picks on the Mayan civilisation that ruled the Americas and how, in a flash of history, it collapsed. Apocalypto is about the prophecy of the blackness of the day and the man who brings the jaguar for he would lead them to their end.

So that’s the excuse to shoot the film in Catemaco, one of the last remaining tracts of rainforests in Mexico. It is a visually satiating locale and director Gibson does well to capture the idyllic beauty and primitiveness of the place as also the tribe that inhabits it. Gibson used only the natives in the film that opens with a quote from Will Durant "a great civilisation is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."

Jaguar’s Paw is an ordinary man who is pushed into heroic deeds when he is captured and to be sacrificed for the widespread famine that has ravaged his land. So far, so good. But if one expects to learn more about the tribe and its customs, one gets only a modicum of that. How they hunt wild boars and a bit of family life.

It is when it is threatened by another tribe that all the action begins. Showing man’s inhumanity to his fellow men, the film brings out his baser instincts—cruelty, torture and outright sadism. But it is unduly gory.

Hearts are cut out, heads sent rolling downhill and mass graveyards all get enough exposure. The same sadism that began in The Passion of Christ is taken a step further in Apocalypto with Gibson becoming both indulgent and obsessive.

Once he resorts to drama or adventure the docu element goes out of the window and it’s blood and gore. Blood spurts out of the head and violent games are indulged in which makes the second half most repulsive, to say nothing of the very Hindi filmi ending.

That the hero Jaguar’s Paw is like any one-man army is academic but it is the mindless and needless violence that reeks of sadism. In fact one is convinced that history is just an excuse for Gibson to run amok. It is a totally pointless film. Quite avoidable.

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