Apocalypto now

Mel Gibson directed social and anthropological layers into his presentation of the Mayan city in Apocalypto, a film unlike anything I have seen before.

I won't give away much here; let me just tell you what Gibson has accomplished from the standpoint of his craft. Socio-economic classes and religious perspectives vary among the people in the scenes set in a Mayan city. The equivalents of present-day Pentecostals and Episcopalians, as well as the lower and middle and upper classes, and the public manipulators and the true believers, are all readily discernable, even with the subtitles on the screen and the busyness and grotesqueness of the city scenes. Volumes are communicated with subtle gestures between socially important characters during a scene in which a solar eclipse frightens many within the city. Some were thinking about angry gods; others clearly knew something of the solar system's calendar. A complicated society is made easy to grasp, while never simplistic.

With all this depth of vision throughout the film, it almost seems too normal to see action sequences that fall back on common conventions, even if those sequences are flawlessly portrayed. I mean, how many times have we seen some variation of the good guy sliding across the ground to snatch a much-needed weapon in perfect choreography with the bad guy? Yet the scenes tighten with primal fear.

It's too bad Gibson brought the spotlight onto his alcohol problems and his feelings about Jews just months before this film was released. Of course, he said he was sorry, and I believe he's sincere (how could he have worked among the diversity of Hollywood and made it so far if he was a full-blown bigot?). Still, many will hold those incidents against him and choose to skip Apocalypto, which is an undeniable work of cinematic art, a display of profound artistic vision.

I'm in awe of the guy.