In retrospect, all this works so much to the film's advantage that cynics might deduce that Mel staged his DWI arrest and subsequent retreat from the public eye as part of a very unorthodox (and economical!) publicity campaign, one aimed at cloaking Apocalypto in a cloud of mystery and tantalizing suspicion.Īs it turns out, the movie is no demented exercise in esoterica. Was it possible that Apocalyptoa big-budget movie with no stars, about an obscure culture and made in the Yucatec Mayan languagewas some kind of folie de grandeur, a crazy art film that might finally reveal Mel as the berserk cinematic Captain Ahab that some had long suspected? That impression was subtly bolstered by the fact that, after Mel's public embarrassments earlier this year, his new film was kept under wraps rather than being the subject of a lengthy marketing blitz. I'm not sure why anyone would have thought otherwise, except that Mel's career has long suggested a loose cannon that could go spinning overboard at any moment.
And that at least tells us how Mel will be regarded in Hollywood this Christmas: not as a raving, pathological anti-Semite, but as a visionary filmmaker with a wee drinking problem. Less dogmatic than The Passion of the Christ, with blue body paint to equal Braveheart, Gibson's Apocalypto manages to make Mesoamerican pre-history as heart-thumpingly entertaining as a Rambo sequel.Īs unlikely as this movie sounded, it now has "huge hit" written all over it.
Mel Gibson, our leading purveyor (and practitioner) of Extreme History, is back with another paean to the ecstasy of agony.
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