I've been excited to see Mel Gibson's new movie Apocalypto ever since I heard about the project. I'm not a Mel Gibson fan by any means, and the guy of course has some serious problems. But I've always felt that there are a great number of historical cultures that have been completely neglected by the movies, so when I heard about Mel's movie about the Mayans I was very appreciative of the concept. The movie turned out not to disappoint.
Although almost all reviews I read said that this takes place in the pre-Columbian times, this is not the case. It is really post-Columbian, but pre-first contact with the Mayan, probably in the year 1517. The existence of smallpox on the movie is sort of a giveaway.
The movie itself is good, and does a very good job humanizing those who we would ordinarily think of as primitive forest dwellers. The movie does a good job of showing many aspects of both the Mayan and the forest culture, providing lots of information without taking away from the plot and action of the movie. I'm sure there are historical flaws. One I noticed was the fact that the Mayans were surprised by an eclipse. Actually, they were fairly sophisticated with their astronomical knowledge, and would surely have known about it beforehand.
So, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I don't think it's a great movie, but it is a good and original one, which is fairly rare nowadays. Go forth and see it. And, someone out there, make more movies like it. There are a million fascinating places and times out there, and we've only seen stories of a small fraction of it.
Posted by ahyatt at December 23, 2006 10:06 PM