Movie Review: Apocalypto

Apocalypto (2006) 

Directed by Mel Gibson

Written by Mel Gibson, Farhad Safinia 

Starring Rudy Youngblood

Release Date December 8th, 2006 

Published December 7th, 2006 

I truly believe that Mel Gibson needs psychological counseling. I'm not joking. It's not just his very public personal problems, but also his career choices and bizarre blood fetish. All the way back to his Oscar winning epic Braveheart, to his blood soaked take on the death of Jesus in The Passion of the Christ and now his latest blood soaked adventure Apocalypto takes Mel's his sanguine obsession to new horrifying depths.

Apocalypto is more violent and gruesome than all three Saw pictures combined. It makes Mel's own Passion look like a kiddie picture. Gibson has gone over the deep end with his obsession with viscera and yet his direction is so confident and professional I'm tempted to forgive his bloodlust. I can't; but I'm tempted.

In 500 B.C the Mayan culture came to a bloody and violent end. The fear, tumult and consumption grew to such epic proportions that it simply could no longer sustain itself. Mel Gibson's Apocalypto picks up the story near the end as the decadent violence began spilling beyond the mayans own borders. Human hunters began rampaging through small villages murdering innocent tribes and taking hostages who will become human sacrifices to the mayan gods.

Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) is a member of a small tribe on the far periphery of the Mayan empire. A peaceful hunting group, the tribe is living idyllically in peace when a mayan hunting group overruns them. Jaguar Paw manages to hide his pregnant wife and daughter in a crevasse before joining the fight and being taken hostage. Before he is taken however, he is forced to watch as his father is murdered.

Jaguar Paw and much of his tribe are marched back to the Mayan enclave where a giant stone staircase has been erected. The stairs are covered in blood and guts and as Jaguar Paw looks up at this massive structure; sacrifices are already taking place and seem to have started and never stop. As he is marched to the top heads roll down the stairs and bodies piled in gruesome, stomach turning piles next to the bloody alter.

Only a miracle saves Jaguar Paw from becoming a sacrifice but his escape is not assured. The hunting group decides to play a dangerous game, allowing Jaguar Paw to run away as they fire arrows and spears at his back. When he finds his way back to the forest the film becomes an epic chase scene filled with exciting escapes and horrifyingly brutal hand to hand combat.

On the one hand I was literally turning green from the stomach turning violence of Apocalypto. On the other hand, Gibson's filming of this violence, and especially the electrifying chase scenes, is so compelling I wanted to really like this film. His skill is so strong and his direction so assured that even the brutality is exceptionally well directed. Gibson's bloodlust is absolutely repellent, but his skill as a filmmaker is remarkable.

Rudy Youngblood is a terrific young actor who does an exceptional job in seperating himself from the rest of the cast and earning our sympathy. His performance goes along way to making Apocalypto an absorbing human drama. If it just wasn't so beyond acceptable levels of brutality I could recommend this film. As it is, Apocalypto is simply to vicious and blood soaked for me to recommend it to anyone, no matter how strong their stomach may be.

Alfred Hitchcock managed to make Birds a menacing force without having them ripping out someones eyeball. Martin Scorsese uses gory violence sparingly in his The Departed which gives the graphic nature of that violence much more punch. Mel Gibson could stand to learn a few things from Hitchcock and Scorsese. The extreme nature of the violence Gibson depicts in Apocalypto never fails to shock but the repetitive use of gory viscera does become numbing after a while and takes a great deal away from the compelling aspects of this story.

A touch of subtlety and Apocalypto could have been an extraordinary, epic, action adventure. As it is, the only thing anyone will take away from the experience of Apocalypto is just how sick a human being Mel Gibson must be. Gibson is obsessed with blood and guts and while he may justify his bloodlust by saying that he is trying to be 'realistic', there is no justification for presenting such brutality. There is a way to be true to the violence of Apocalypto without exploiting the gory aspects of it.

Mel Gibson is a terrifically talented director. He could be a great director, one who goes down in history. Unfortunately his obsession with blood and guts, and rolling heads down stairs, and ripping out peoples hearts, and stacks of headless human bodies makes him nothing more than a slasher filmmaker. He is just a cut above snuff films with his fixation on viscera and gore in Apocalypto as well as Passion of The Christ and Braveheart.

There is another oddball aspect of Apocalypto that needs to be mentioned. Early in the film, as Gibson is establishing the Idyll nature of Jaguar Paw's village, the tribe hunts and as they do they play pranks on one another and speak in a fashion that reminded me of the offhand nature of a Seinfeld episode. This is kind of entertaining but Gibson's translation of the mayan language used by his characters leaves one to wonder if he is being true to his characters or just going for cheap laughs.

Mel Gibson is impossible for me to like as a person, but as a director his talent is undeniable. His direction of Apocalypto is professional, polished and compelling. However, his bloodlust is so disturbing you must once again wonder about his character. How can a filmmaker, or any human being for that matter, meditate so deeply on such extreme violence.

I'm sure Mel Gibson felt the violence of Apocalypto was necessary to tell this story but the extreme nature of that violence is so graphic and so horrifying that it is fair to question his mental state. No matter how well depicted, I simply cannot recommend this level of violence to anyone no matter their tolerance for extreme amounts of blood and guts.

Mel Gibson, please seek help.