review

Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto: symbolism, truth and consequences

by W. E. Gutman

From the mists of time, deep in the primeval Guatemalan jungles, comes a document known as the Popol Vuh, a fragmentary chronicle of the allegories, beliefs and attitudes of the Maya. An epic poem of great lyric beauty and haunting melancholy, the Popol Vuh is also a record of the peregrinations of a people caught in life’s eternal struggle for survival, identity and cultural self-affirmation.

The Maya feared death more than any of life’s inescapable ordeals, and only exceptional individuals, they claimed, could find their way to the heavenly gates. The unworthy were hastily dispatched to Xibalba --- the Maya hell, the “House of Gloom,” the “World of Ghosts,” the “Mansion of the Damned” --- an abyss teeming with monsters where they endured ceaseless cold, hunger and other agonies.

If the Maya took great pains to elude such unenviable fate (self-mutilation and orgiastic human sacrifices, they believed, could forestall the inevitable) they had no illusion that life “on the surface” was apt to be as hideous as in Xibalba’s entrails. Ego, greed, cruelty, deception, vengeance --- all prevailed, acted out with an incontinence bordering on lunacy. Blood-lettings, wars, decapitations, amputations, in short, senseless carnage, were as likely to envenom their mortal existence as the “lower regions” to which their souls would eventually be consigned.

Longing for redemption, their leaders engaged in an endless consecration of grandiose ideals. Awaiting the advent of dawn but not the passage of greater events, they yearned for a spiritual reawakening that would never be. They pandered to unfeeling gods and offered sacrifices to atone inexpiable sins while the masses were fated to a life of submission and servitude in the shadow of despotic and degenerate elites.

Busy erecting flamboyant pantheons, obsessed with their own place in posterity, the nihilistic demigods the people idolized were no kinder than the bloodthirsty Lords of Xibalba. They knew that they were false of heart, promoters of evil and tormentors of men, and that their extravagance and folly would lead to civil strife, social disintegration, economic exhaustion and, in due course, apocalypse.

Eventually, the debauchery, the drug-induced stupor, the bombastic mystique of their masters’ esoteric pursuits began to wear thin in the eyes of the overburdened populace. “Of what practical value to us, illiterate Maya,” they pondered, “are abstractions like systems of reckoning dates, stargazing and arcane hieroglyphics, when such knowledge is the exclusive domain of the rulers?”

Too long had the peons been forced into a state of servitude; too exacting was the endless labor to erect temples and sacrificial altars, tend the fields of the princely castes and pay exorbitant tributes to corrupt and insensitive monarchs. For centuries the multitudes had surrendered to the ruling aristocracy and soon the sting of despotism, the ignominy of persecution would arouse a collective call for rebellion.

Along with a sharp increase in the dominance of the elite and the unfettered opulence and ostentation their lifestyle commanded, the number of underlings and petty functionaries needed to cater to their whims grew to colossal proportions. This imposed additional burdens for food and other goods needed to sustain the hierarchy. It is likely that these burdens triggered ever-widening divisions and fed mounting hostilities between the lower classes and their masters.

There is now evidence in the Late Classic era --- the period proceeding the “fall” --- of an unimpeded population explosion and a dizzying acceleration in the number and size of urban centers. All these pressures --- overpopulation, exaggerated demands by the plutocracy for goods and services, widening rifts between social strata --- had a profound and everlasting impact on Maya civilization: It left it teetering breathlessly on the brink. Mortally wounded, nudged by an irresistible momentum, the once great, the magnificent Maya civilization quivered and dipped over the edge.

Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, which focuses on a few days in the dizzying tug-of-war between life and death in early 16th century Mesoamerica, hints at the sudden and staggering collapse of a once-glorious empire. Savage, hypnotic, this meticulously researched and disquieting magnum opus also subtly suggests that famine --- brought on by overpopulation, over-cultivation, crippling outbreaks of disease and widespread discontent with an increasingly remote and self-absorbed leadership --- would result in economic breakdown, anarchy, desertion and dispersal.

For the surviving Maya --- some three million live in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras --- only two paths of survival remain: servitude and assimilation, or alternating states of neglect and violent repression by the foreign despots who now occupy their domain. Like their tribal brothers and sisters in the region, they remain suspended between two contrasting and incongruous worlds --- ancient (intimate and familiar) and modern (alien and menacing).

In Central America, where prodigality and want, esotericism and frightening reality coexist in shameless intimacy, Xibalba is a familiar signpost on the well-traveled road to nowhere. Sadly, for indigenous communities in the Isthmus, there is no exit ramp. New dynasties of rich and powerful overlords seem hell-bent on replicating history.

Mr. Gibson is a gifted actor and a brilliant moviemaker. Will he have the moral courage to crown the masterpiece that is Apocalypto with a sequel that picks up where half-naked men are glancing toward the sea, terrified and uncomprehending, as alien craft filled with helmeted creatures wielding swords and crosses slink toward the shore?

Could future blockbusters also include an honest cinematic glimpse at the horror of the Crusades, which preceded the rape of the “New World,” and the “Holy” Inquisition which followed it?

W. E. Gutman is a widely published veteran journalist. He has been on intermittent assignment in Central America since 1991. He lives in southern California.

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