Gibson's Passion of the Mayans is Part Action, Part Propaganda
Bill Kilpatrick
January 16, 2008
Apocalypto, Mel Gibson's follow-up to The Passion of the Christ, is an effective actioner, with one major problem: Its own pretentiousness, as social commentary, puts Gibson on a short leash. When he starts departing from known facts, it's hard to know whether he's just being sloppy or whether he's pushing propaganda.
Great direction need not be in the service of either truth or entertainment. Leni Riefenstahl will be remembered as one of the greatest directors of all time, but Triumph of the Will was no popcorn classic. It was a love note to Hitler and the boys. Coming off of a one-two punch of ethnic insensitivity, in The Passion of the Christ, and his explicit antisemitic rant, the last thing Gibson needs is to mix popcorn and politics.
Yet that's exactly what Apocalypto seems to do. It opens with a quote from Will Durant, that no civilization is conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. That's the kind of heavy-handed statement that screams, "Sermon!" Is Gibson using his tale to call the rest of us to repentance? It sure looks like it.
But then Mel tries to have it both ways. His story, set during the period of the Mayans, shows a small, peaceful tribe, tucked in the rainforest, ravaged by Mayan warriors, bent on taking men back to be sacrificed to their god, Kulkulcan. What follows is a fairly brutal, gory, wrenching laundry list of atrocities - Abu Ghraib with nachos. It's ugly. It's mean-spirited. It's hard to blow off as just another Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
And yet, Gibson's facts are grossly misleading. The Mayans were farmers. They didn't live in the rainforest. They didn't live off of primitive hunting. They were astronomers, mathematicians, innovators in writing, art and architecture. Their god, Kulkulcan, was a white, bearded god associated with peace, farming and the resurrection. Sound like anyone you've heard of?
The Kulkulcan of this film is more like the Aztec god of war, Huitzilopochtli. In fact, these Mayans look more like the Aztecs. And well they should. The actual Mayans went into decline five centuries before the Spanish arrived. It wasn't Mayan civilization that got bested by the Spanish. It was the Aztecs. Gibson ignores the experts - who say the Mayans were done in by drought, disease, political unrest, soil exhaustion, disruption of trade routes and overuse of their resources. In Mel Gibsonia, their society was overthrown because of human sacrifice.
But human sacrifice, which was practiced by the Mayans, was practiced by all pre-Columbian civilizations, the Aztecs more than anyone else. It wasn't an everyday event. It wasn't even done with the degree to which we execute people in our own time. To the ancients, the rain that fell from heaven was the blood of the gods, which had to be replenished with human blood. Like the sacrifices of the Old Testament, human sacrifice required the best you could offer - not some poor slob who got awakened by frat boys with jaded blades. Sacrificial candidates were honored, feted, sex objects and routinely offered drugs to deaden the pain. Sacrifice was considered a consecration, not a method of torture or a form of terror.
That Gibson would want to jazz up the action in an action-adventure is fine. But pretentious sermonizing, mixed with the faux-realism of native actors speaking in Mayan, while presenting the Mayans as barbarians fit to be conquered, pushes past popcorn and straight into propaganda.
That's when we wonder what Gibson is really up to. It's no secret that he wears his cross to the right of the Pope. Could he be trying to say that the Spanish Conquest of America was an act of liberation? What better way to make the case that Cortes and company were a 16th-century Seventh Army than to equate Mayan civilization with the death camps of the Holocaust?
In doing so, Apocalypto seems to be saying that one of Catholicism's most shameful moments - in granting approval to conquest and enslavement of indigenous peoples - was really an act of charity. For all its action-based spills and thrills - and this film has more than its share - that's still a pretty offensive message, maybe even as offensive as suggesting that the Jews were to blame for the Roman execution of Christ.
Whatever the case, in the absence of a Mayan version of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, Mel Gibson may have finally found a group he can malign with impunity. If they want to enjoy this Passion in the jungle, with a little bit of The Patriot and Mad Max thrown in, audiences should stick to the action. If they want real history, they should read something other than a subtitle.
Great direction need not be in the service of either truth or entertainment. Leni Riefenstahl will be remembered as one of the greatest directors of all time, but Triumph of the Will was no popcorn classic. It was a love note to Hitler and the boys. Coming off of a one-two punch of ethnic insensitivity, in The Passion of the Christ, and his explicit antisemitic rant, the last thing Gibson needs is to mix popcorn and politics.
Yet that's exactly what Apocalypto seems to do. It opens with a quote from Will Durant, that no civilization is conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. That's the kind of heavy-handed statement that screams, "Sermon!" Is Gibson using his tale to call the rest of us to repentance? It sure looks like it.
But then Mel tries to have it both ways. His story, set during the period of the Mayans, shows a small, peaceful tribe, tucked in the rainforest, ravaged by Mayan warriors, bent on taking men back to be sacrificed to their god, Kulkulcan. What follows is a fairly brutal, gory, wrenching laundry list of atrocities - Abu Ghraib with nachos. It's ugly. It's mean-spirited. It's hard to blow off as just another Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
And yet, Gibson's facts are grossly misleading. The Mayans were farmers. They didn't live in the rainforest. They didn't live off of primitive hunting. They were astronomers, mathematicians, innovators in writing, art and architecture. Their god, Kulkulcan, was a white, bearded god associated with peace, farming and the resurrection. Sound like anyone you've heard of?
The Kulkulcan of this film is more like the Aztec god of war, Huitzilopochtli. In fact, these Mayans look more like the Aztecs. And well they should. The actual Mayans went into decline five centuries before the Spanish arrived. It wasn't Mayan civilization that got bested by the Spanish. It was the Aztecs. Gibson ignores the experts - who say the Mayans were done in by drought, disease, political unrest, soil exhaustion, disruption of trade routes and overuse of their resources. In Mel Gibsonia, their society was overthrown because of human sacrifice.
But human sacrifice, which was practiced by the Mayans, was practiced by all pre-Columbian civilizations, the Aztecs more than anyone else. It wasn't an everyday event. It wasn't even done with the degree to which we execute people in our own time. To the ancients, the rain that fell from heaven was the blood of the gods, which had to be replenished with human blood. Like the sacrifices of the Old Testament, human sacrifice required the best you could offer - not some poor slob who got awakened by frat boys with jaded blades. Sacrificial candidates were honored, feted, sex objects and routinely offered drugs to deaden the pain. Sacrifice was considered a consecration, not a method of torture or a form of terror.
That Gibson would want to jazz up the action in an action-adventure is fine. But pretentious sermonizing, mixed with the faux-realism of native actors speaking in Mayan, while presenting the Mayans as barbarians fit to be conquered, pushes past popcorn and straight into propaganda.
That's when we wonder what Gibson is really up to. It's no secret that he wears his cross to the right of the Pope. Could he be trying to say that the Spanish Conquest of America was an act of liberation? What better way to make the case that Cortes and company were a 16th-century Seventh Army than to equate Mayan civilization with the death camps of the Holocaust?
In doing so, Apocalypto seems to be saying that one of Catholicism's most shameful moments - in granting approval to conquest and enslavement of indigenous peoples - was really an act of charity. For all its action-based spills and thrills - and this film has more than its share - that's still a pretty offensive message, maybe even as offensive as suggesting that the Jews were to blame for the Roman execution of Christ.
Whatever the case, in the absence of a Mayan version of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, Mel Gibson may have finally found a group he can malign with impunity. If they want to enjoy this Passion in the jungle, with a little bit of The Patriot and Mad Max thrown in, audiences should stick to the action. If they want real history, they should read something other than a subtitle.
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