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Mel Gibson's historical drama “Apocalypto” certainly has a veneer of authenticity. If you have to scramble to remember your fifth-grade lessons on Maya culture, you'd certainly believe you're watching an accurate, detail-rich depiction of Mesoamerican life.
“A lot of people will think this is how it was,” said Walter Little, an anthropologist and expert on Maya language and culture at the State University of New York at Albany. “Unfortunately.”
Little and two other Mesoamerican scholars at the Albany campus recently screened the big-budget, subtitled epic, which opened Friday and was last weekend's No. 1 movie, grossing $14.2 million.
All three said they were disappointed by the plot and taken aback by the graphic violence, which to these eyes suggested “Braveheart” as directed by Quentin Tarantino in a particularly vile mood.
But even if they could sponge away the blood, these experts found the devil – or at least a set of thumbs-down reviews – in the details.
“This was not a film about the Mayas,” said Robert Carmack, a retired anthropology professor from SUNY Albany's lauded Mesoamerican program. “It's a big mistake – almost a tragedy – that they present this as a Maya film.”
In any genre film, experts and geeks alike will pore over the minutiae. In their estimation, a movie rises or falls on the little things.
Seafaring experts debate the minor gaffes of “Titanic,” while experts on ancient Rome talk about minor historical imperfections in “Gladiator.”
Most moviegoers won't catch these mistakes or willful fact-doctorings. Does it matter to the average ticket holder that Gibson apparently fudged some facts? Not really, especially if you're just looking for a period adventure featuring, by my unofficial count, 12 wildly different modes of killing.
There are no guns, but lots of lethal weapons. To those in the know, however, the flaws stick out like Roseanne Barr in a Broadway musical.
Take the film's depiction of a major Maya city that serves as the setting for much of the film's third act. Many of the architectural details are correct, but they're cobbled together from different locations (including ancient cities in Guatemala and the Yucatan) and different eras, the experts said.
So what, you say? Try picturing 16th-century explorer Giovanni da Verrazano navigating the east coast of the New World, and then ending his journey by traversing the New York City suspension bridge that bears his name.
You get the idea.
The experts said they thought, during much of the movie, it was set sometime between A.D. 300 and 900 – until a closing scene places it closer to the early 1500s.
“It was a postmodern collage,” Little said. “It was a hodgepodge.”Carmack grew more and more steamed in his post-screening analysis. In particular, he seethed over the portrayals of human sacrifices and other spectacles, which he said more closely resembled practices used by the Aztecs or even the ancient Romans.
The sadism that permeates the movie was simply not part of the culture, the experts said. Yes, the Mayas practiced human sacrifice, but in ways that were highly ritualized and usually involved a single victim. Not pretty, to be sure, but a far cry from the slaughterhouse of mass sacrifice depicted in “Apocalypto” – a virtual conga line of the soon-to-be headless, followed by desecration of their bodies.
The body count was high, and the treatment of the dead cavalier, all three anthropologists said.
The Mayas, an agricultural society, also would not have had an open field of rotting corpses situated near their crops.
Modern-day descendants of the Mayas “would be totally disgusted by this film,” Carmack said. “It was all invented. The ritual was a disgusting perversion of human sacrifices among the Mayas.”
Edgar Martin del Campo, a newly arrived faculty member who begins teaching at SUNY Albany in January, talked about religious glitches and other flaws. Examples: Mayas would not have been awed by an eclipse as they were in the film – they were, in fact, early astronomers. Villagers would not have been dumbstruck by a city; most lived in or around metropolises. The costumes were contrived.
Give the film this, the scholars said: Gibson was brave enough to make the movie in the Yucatec language. But just as the use of Yucatec isn't exactly a guarantee of boffo box office, the historical inaccuracies of Gibson's latest will zoom right by the average viewer. The gore will not.
Gibson's last subtitled period piece, 2004's “The Passion of the Christ,” was an international hit. Even so, that graphic drama drew criticism similar to that already levied against “Apocalypto,” angering many scholars and Jewish leaders for its depiction of Christ's final hours.
“The Passion” was a cultural phenomenon that sparked mainstream debate over the Gospels and the history of anti-Semitism, among other topics. It's doubtful the history behind “Apocalypto” will prompt widespread research by moviegoers – most of whom will be in search of nothing more than two hours of action. Regardless, the experts will be howling. It will be up to you whether to listen.
“The problem is when you misrepresent (a subject to) somebody, they don't always seek out the correct version of things,” Little said. “They're going to accept that as reality. So why would they go search out what it really is?”
