Apocalypto

I can’t wait to not see Mel Gibson’s latest film. “An action adventure of mythic proportions” according to Mel, Apocalypto, set 3,000 years ago in Central America, features dialogue spoken in an obscure Mayan dialect. I suspect that it is, like Mel’s other religious epic, heavily dependent on myth and ignorant of history and will thus appeal heavily to the faith junkies.

The title suggests that the film which is said to explore “civilizations and what undermines them” will give some Gibsonian moral interpretation to what wiped out their cities. It will probably ignore the evidence that suggests it was a shift in rain patterns that destroyed their crops and forced them to abandon civilization – such as it was. I will not be seeing the film, and so I will leave it to you to tell me whether the Mayan dialect used in Apocalypto is as anachronistic as the 12th century Vulgate Gibson puts in the mouths of Roman Centurions. The film says he, will shun "European faces" to preserve authenticity, unlike the European faces of Jesus and friends set against the stereotypical Jews in his previous opus.

Having read about Mel’s belief that Hitler wasn’t all that bad and the Jews just moved to New Jersey, and having read about his belief that the Vatican Counsel of the 1960’s was a plot by Jews and Mormons to destroy the Roman Catholic Church, I’m tempted to dismiss his other historical assertions a priori. I’m sure it will be colorful and at least superficially authentic, but if it’s like his Passion which leans on the Gospel of John and ignores objective history it will be tendentious, pretentious and flawed.

To his credit, Mel Gibson, who seems to look more and more like a wild-eyed, Bronze Age prophet, has donated a million dollars in aid to Mexican storm victims and will be, for some reason I can’t fathom, donating the fake pyramids from the movie to the city of Veracruz, but he’s misspent his money. You see no Mexicans were harmed by the hurricane, they all went to New Jersey.