Mel Gibson is clearly fascinated by violence and blood. Just as, even if implicitly, The Passion of the Christ showed how civilization was born in blood, so does Apocalypto show how civilization dies in blood.
The film opens with a quote: “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.” by Ariel Durant. The tone for apocalypse is set, and the film does indeed feel very much like the prelude to disaster - something the end drives home in an unexpected turn. However, there is something more significant going on in the film, which seems strangely familiar. A mighty civilization fears destruction by an unknown and uncontrollable plague, causing it to conquer neighboring people to sacrifice them to appease the gods. If they resist, they must be forced and if they kill in self-defence, here is no limit to vengeance - noy even the death of one’s own people.
Has Mel Gibson suddenly turned a critical eye toward US culture and society, the war against terror and the fear of outside enemies?
In many ways, the film’s focus lies elsewhere and succeeds elsewhere. We follow a small tribe of Mayans who are suddenly invaded by others from a strange city of stone. This first contact between these two cultures and their differences works well, the strangeness of the Mayan kingdom is emphasized as we see it through the eyes of the newcomers. The cruelty and incomprehensibility of their actions is well staged, the use of slow-motion renders the mask-wearing priests utterly alien.
However, the problem of the film is its deep fascination with the apocalyptic mood and atmosphere created in the city of stone. Decadent people line the streets, human sacrifices are received with cries of jubiliation. It is the decline of this kingdom and the consequences which is the drive of the film. The escape of Jaguar Paw and his subsequent chase only shows the madness and irrationality of the Mayans, but none of the characters are ever developed to the point where their actions take on any deeper meaning. We cannot relate to their actions, just as we cannot relate to the characters themselves.
Jaguar Paw is obviously the protagonist, and the hero in the sense that he attempts to save his pregnant wife and child, and we understand his desperation to return and help them. But he never becomes more than a cliché - a stereotype. Certainly he never becomes a rebel or revolutionary, never becomes a symbol of resistance against injustice. In the end, there is no civilization critique, only apocalyptic dread.
The ending, when the Spanish arrive, is unexpected as it has no direct relation to the plot as such, only to the quote at the begining. We now understand that the civilisation to be destroyed is the Mayan one (which we knew already), not just the homely and pleasant village we saw at the beginning.
However, there is a peculiar double-bind where the interesting reversal of revealing the Spanish as invaders, aggressors and imperialists through the eyes of the Mayans (which is never followed-through, even), ends up suggesting that it really didn’t matter that the Spanish invaded the Americas - they were doomed anyway.
The film lives as a spectacle, is a spectacle in that it is the visual style which is the most impressive and the most significant about the film. It is also its emphasis on spectacle which robs the film of any oppositional intent or effect. Apocalypto is a conservative - and conservationist - film which safely relegates history to the past, and empties it of meaning by turning it into a spectacle.
