APOCALYPTO (2006)

This is Mel Gibson's version of the beginnings and the end of the Mayan civilization in Mexico. Wil Durant's quote is used at the beginning of the film to the effect that no civilization can be taken over if it hasn't already begun to rot from within. I doubt very much if Gibson intended any parallels with our civilization. Then again, maybe he has more foresight than I do envision.

Gibson's story begins with boys being boys on a hunt in the forest, teasing one of their tribe for his sexual shortcomings. When they return to the village, the one who was the butt of their jokes even has a harpy mother-in-law, to remind us all that even though they wear very little clothing, have bones sticking out of their chins, and walk instead of drive, they are a lot like you and me, or at least those of us with harpy mother-in-laws.

This tribe of primitive innocents is then raided by a band of brutal males from a more advanced tribe. It is a Mel Gibson movie, so the emphasis is very much on the "brutal" and the "male," with obvious irony surrounding the "advanced." The women are raped and killed, the children left behind and the men taken, presumably to be slaves.

Through the jungle they go to the more advanced civilization that once was the great Mayan civilization. Now beset by drought, disease and the disorienting distraction of apocalyptic omens delivered by trembling, self- appointed shamans, this is a culture that is delivering itself back to the forest, not in innocence but in decadent decay, and rot.

Again, because it is a Mel Gibson movie, we are subjected to immense amounts of blood and brutality. If you can't take it, then you must be one of those sissies I imagine he rants about when he is done ranting about ethnic or religious minorities.

After a long foot race through the jungle - just like a car chase in any other movie, but on foot in this one so it takes longer - our hero returns to the forest of his innocence and to the woman he loves.

The woman happens to be in a hole delivering his second son while the hole is filling up with water -- they arrive at the sea and, of course, the Spanish conquistadors and their Catholic missionaries are waiting there, having just arrived in their ships to claim the new land and all it's lost souls.

It is just as absurd and ridiculously predicable as it sounds.

The attention to detail in the sound and production design departments is commendable. Some of the photography is very pretty. It is all spoken in a dialect we presume to be Mayan, so you have to read the subtitles to get the overblown meaning of all the prophecies and the poetry.

There is a strange kind of flexing of muscles and a strutting around in the filmmaking here. I don't like it. I never have.