After producing and directing the religious blockbuster of all time, “The Passion of the Christ”, Mel Gibson is once again praised for ‘blood-and-guts actions’, ‘breathtaking vistas’, and ‘bruising beauty’ in his ancient Mayan epic Apocalypto.
“Despite the subject’s inherent spectacle, conflict and societal interest, Central America’s pre-Columbian history has scarcely been touched by filmmakers,” writes Variety critic Todd McCarthy, who also called the film “remarkable.”
The Hollywood Reporter described it as “a first-rate epic” while questioning its “over-the-top violence”.
Maxim magazine’s Pete Hammond said he was “blown away by the filmmaking”.
The title “Apocalypto” which in Greek means “an unveiling and a new beginning,’ has been filmed entirely in the Mayan language.
Apocalypto features a cast of unknown actors from Mexico City, the Yucatan and it views the decline of Mexico’s native civilization.
Rudy Youngblood played the role of the hero Jaguar Paw, a native American whose village is attacked by Mayan warriors. They burn huts, rape women and take the men to be human sacrifices in a Mayan city that is beset by drought and crop failure.
The film will be released on December 8. Earlier it was slated to release on August 4 but Touchstone Pictures has delayed the release date to December 8, 2006.
The film is subtitled in English, with the characters speaking in an ancient version of a language called Yucatec.
Apocalypto is being strictly pursued because of Gibson’s arrest on drunken driving charges in July and because of his successive anti-Semitic outburst against a police officer.
Last month Rolling Stone magazine described Apocalypto as “a tremendously exciting chase movie” that was “breathtaking to watch”.
Gibson has been giving a number of good movies such as ‘Braveheart’ which received two Academy Awards. The Passion of the Christ is another blockbuster that grossed US$611,899,420 worldwide and $370,782,930 in the US alone. It became the eighth highest-grossing film in history.
Gibson’s Apocalypto is a film of blunt provocation and bruising beauty — it’s magnificent to watch a jaguar running in the jungle and pursuing the man who is no less than beast.
The movie is partly intended as a political metaphor about civilizations in decline indirectly referring to the perceived crises in Western civilization and compares Mayan human sacrifice with sending troops to Iraq for no reason. Gibson knows how to make a heart throbbing films.
