Motion picture is exactly what the first word implies. Motion is what mobilizes a picture to take the spectator and make him run all the way, from incept until the culmination of the plot. That is explicitly what Mr. Mel Gibson does with his latest masterpiece, “Apocalypto”
Humor, history, scenery, dialogue, mis-en-scene, dynamism, continuity, eccentricity, even gullibility do not escape the format of directing. But, the pivotal artistic intrusion is that even the ephemeral scenes bear messages that are, probably missed by most if not all laymen, as spectators. Engraved messages in this spectacular epic are ad continuum in a number of sequential scenes. These messages are in depth, and are diligently addressed to masses, probably numbering no less than 100 million people, more or less, that will unfold their wallets, and venture out to see this adept and fulfilling film.
Hope, humanity, pursuit of faith, be it incipient, agnostic or fully amplified, are the ingredients accompanying the story throughout the screen-time. And, randomly one notices the luminous overshadowing, and unimpaired rendition of the motto that is seldom pronounced, that one serves God in the name of humanity, rather than serving humanity in the name of the God.
Not since Charles Chaplin, Sergei Eisenstein and Orson Welles, have motion pictures bore such inescapable intrinsic intuitions as a motif to relay an ideology, that we, as spectators, are too preoccupied to take note of that what is most relevant to us.
The epitome of Apocalypto is portrayed in the last scene, when faced with landing crafts of Spanish Conquistadors, led by a craft bearing the Captain side by side of a priest with a cross. The naïve survivors of the Mayan holocaust, in danger of the unknown, famine and eventual death, adamantly resolve to distance themselves as far as they can into the treacherous jungles rather than bowing the civilized colonialists conquest and conversion.
Did a worldly fully amplified religion serve the Mayans, or its proponents? History is not bleak, and we are aware of the results.
Religion is faith, and faith does not disassociate right from wrong, when it is imbedded blindly and without reservations in the minds of mankind.
Credo Mel Gibson. Thank you once again.