And for a follow-up, Apocalypto

  Very much a companion piece to “The Passion of the Christ” with its obsession with history’s greatest and most terrible themes, its skilled viciousness at depicting violated human flesh, and a sort of bloody grandeur that will either compel, offend, or both. Despite a laudable decision to cast actual Mayans, and a reported degree of conscientious research, historical accuracy is clearly not Gibson’s primary priority. The setting is supposedly Mayan civilization in its hour of crisis and decay, but the sacrificial rites that form the film’s most terrifying set-piece have more in common with Aztec religion, the gruesome details of which are burned more deeply into pop cultural consciousness. Doubtless there are other issues, but straightforward errors are forgivable in light of Gibson’s stated intentions; just as Apocalypse Now is a story of inner darkness played out against a Vietnamese backdrop, rather than a historical piece about the Second Indo-China War, so Apocalypto is less about the Mayans themselves than it is about the travails of dying civilization in general. Pre-Columbian South America is barely explored in cinema, so that it is depicted at all is a minor victory.

  Yet as a meditation on profound issues, there is little to recommend Apocalypto. It is less an epic story than another nightmarish historical simulation, the journey of the enslaved tribespeople whose number include the protagonist, Jaguar Paw, mirroring Jim Caveziel’s gruelling march towards Calvary in “Passion”. Yet instead of the ultimate symbol of the Christian faith, a pagan temple awaits. Horrible, meaningless death and tragedy abound for roughly the first two thirds of the picture; rape, murder, enslavement, families sundered and children abandoned in the jungle. There is a lazy division between “Good” Mayans, the peaceable forest-based hunters we meet first, and the “Bad” Mayans who come from the corrupt city, and who raze the “Good” Mayans village and haul the surviving men off to be sacrificed, which turns out to be a cynical gambit by the local royalty and priesthood to pacify the anxious masses with blood. In typical Gibson style, the “Bad” Mayans are ugly, brutally intimidating, or, in the case of the disease- and despair-racked populace off the doomed city, pathetic. There is a strong whiff of old-fashioned condescension about this approach; an un-nuanced portrayal that casually splits “natives” into hapless innocents and bloodthirsty heathens. The atmosphere of savagery and dread undeniably holds the attention, but any effort to make it seem somehow meaningful falls flat, leaving a vivid but depressing and nihilistic spectacle.

  Right up to the point where Jaguar Paw manages to escape, killing exactly the right person to provoke a reckless and implacable pursuit that turns Apocalypto’s final third into one of the most adrenaline-charged, inventively savage and compelling action movies ever. Racing through the jungle to rescue his family from a soon-to-be-flooded hiding place, Jaguar Paw finds himself back in his element and able to turn the tables on the slavers chasing him in a variety of unpleasant ways. There’s an element of morbid wish-fulfilment in the retributive violence he metes out (hiding behind the most respectable of motives), but for all the Robert E. Howard-esque crudity of the set-up, Gibson’s predilection for bloody thrills and spills is at least honestly entertaining, which makes it arguably less perverse than the worthy masochism of Passion of the Christ. And the ending is actually the most effective one that could have been written, wrapping up on an ominously ambiguous note, which gives a measure of triumph to the plucky hero without selling out the nightmarish atmosphere of the cruel, grim story.