Apocalypto

That Mel Gibson opts for unusual subjects and that he doesn8217;t shy from intense, excruciating violence is now known. That Mel Gibson gets away with it because he is Mel Gibson is also perhaps known.

But this one time, the violence seems to be for no purpose. Even if the Mayans lived in violent times, the director doesn8217;t seem to think there is anything more to them. He doesn8217;t believe in leaving anything to the imagination, nor in calling to a close a chase that gets more graphic and bloody with every turn.

Plus, since you never get the larger picture of what8217;s happening to the Mayans, you end up wondering if Gibson skipped that part to spend an inordinate time on one man, putting him through more than a person could endure, perhaps even sit through watching. As one reviewer put it, no one is going to come to this film for a history lesson.

Gibson does stick to authenticity as much as possible, with the Mayan village not bathed in rustic charm but rugged mess, the men and women dressed in minimal clothes, and everyone talking an ancient Mayan dialect Yucatec, we are told. The breadth of the film, from the cramped forest to the vast palaces, is captured beautifully, and the film got an Oscar nomination for sound editing. To the credit of the filmmakers the actors, who are all unknown, don8217;t seem to be at a discomfort either talking or understanding the language. While the film is entirely subtitled, it doesn8217;t detract from the project.

The story is placed about the 16th century. The Mayan civilisation is on the decline, disease is plaguing the countryside, and the kings decide that the only way out is to build more temples and perform human sacrifice. These humans are rounded up from the jungles, their villages ravaged, women butchered and raped, and the children left to fend for themselves.

One village the king8217;s men come calling on is led by Flint Sky, with his son Jaguar Paw Youngblood. Jaguar Paw is happily married, with a charming son and a beautiful wife who is expecting their second child. Before the king8217;s men destroy it all and capture him, Jaguar Paw manages to lower his wife and child into a well. He and the others are led away to an unknown fate whose horrors they can only surmise as they reach closer and closer. As we can guess from the film8217;s poster, Jaguar Paw manages to escape and is chased through the jungle by the same men.

Wounded, terrified and aware that his wife and child would die unless he reached home to get them out of the well, Youngblood gives a decent performance. When halfway through the chase, he realises that he is on his territory and decides to give his oppressors a fight, it is not a heroic turnaround, just a quiet determination. There is no explanation or long monologue before a person is killed because none is needed, their eyes say it all.

But by then, you have seen for more than two hours women being raped, men having their throats slit, men getting pushed off cliffs, men having their hearts wrenched out of their bodies while still beating, headless bodies and body-less heads, blood splurting out of wounds in the head, men skewered to a trap, men bitten by serpents not that bloody, come to think of it, women giving birth standing in neck-deep water and carrying an elder child on their shoulders and you want someone to call it a day.

Is this one man escaping his fate, or the ego trip of one director long accused of taking violence too far? You wonder.