How familiar are you with Mesoamerican history? Children who grew up in Central and South America learned early on about the Indigenous Mayans. Mel Gibson’s 2006 ‘Apocalypto’ movie tells the story of the Mayan civilization at the pinnacle of its wealth and power. However, the empire’s foundations are crumbling and leaders think that if they do not construct more temples and sacrifice more people, their harvests and citizens will perish.
The protagonist, Jaguar Paw, a peaceful hunter from a secluded tribe, gets taken in a raid, along with his whole village. He is set to be sacrificed until he makes a daring escape and attempts to return to his pregnant wife and child.
Though much of the storyline in the film is fictional, the accuracy of the advanced architecture, science, and rich Mayan culture cannot go unnoticed. Let’s take a dive into the world of Apocalypto and explore the different languages and cultures depicted throughout the movie.
Multi-Faceted Aspects of the Apocalypto Movie
Multiculturalism
In Pre-Columbian times many Mayans were agricultural people. The men would typically hunt to secure wild game while the women remained in the village to tend to the children and their homes. House lots were designed and tightly controlled areas where fruits, vegetables, and other herbs were planted; and where certain domesticated animals were reared.
The movie features a stark contrast between the villagers and those who lived in the Maya Metropolis. While the jungle was depicted as green and fruitful, the city is dried-out and impoverished.
The men from the village seemed to live peacefully with each other up until the time their village was raided by the brutish men from the Mayan metropolis. The village men were taken to be used as sacrificial rituals to appease the gods and ward off drought; while the women were captured and turned into slaves. This not only tells of the contrast in beliefs between the villagers and their captors but also their difference in survival tactics.
About the Aztec Facet
When Jaguar Paw and the other captives are taken to the Mayan city they are to be sacrificed on a column-shaped stone. This sacrifice is similar to one carried out by the Mexica, an Aztec-related people in central Mexico.
The Aztecs who ruled the Mexican empire in the 15th and 16th centuries, utilized a column-shaped stone on which the victim was stretched out, back arched, providing the sacrificer easier access to the heart from behind the rib cage to make a heart sacrifice.
In the movie, the metropolitan Mayans were depicted to like capturing prisoners from other polities because they represented competition. Capturing, humiliating, and torturing an elite warrior meant appropriating their goods and riches. The Maya did not inherently like torture and violence, but they did enjoy inflicting pain on their political opponents. Fingernails were ripped off, genitalia and breasts were exposed, and malnutrition was widespread.
Different Languages of the Apocalypto Movie
The entire dialogue in Apocalypto is in the Yucatec Maya language. The Yucatec Maya language is one of 32 languages in the Mayan family. It is spoken mainly in the Yucatan Peninsula and Northern Belize.
Gibson intended to cast non-actors in each role, this meant the casting process would span across three continents. For the film, several of the actors had to learn Yucatec Maya. Only about two actors in the entire film were native Yucatec Maya speakers.
While subtitles are necessary for those who don’t speak the language; if you are familiar with the language yourself you may realize that watching the movie with subtitles means that they lag behind the spoken words by about 20-30 seconds.
To Wrap Up
Apocalypto isn’t for the faint of heart. The scenes are vivid, explicit, gruesome, and leave little to the imagination. However, Gibson skillfully depicted the collapse of the Mayan empire, poverty, warfare, drought, and diseases.
Spoiler Alert: As far as being historically accurate is concerned, the arrival of the Spaniards at the end of the movie was about 400 years too soon and blended two vastly different time periods. However, running from one evil into another was a scene that audience members did not expect.
Suddenly, the possibility of being bombarded with yet another odd culture and religion at the hands of Spaniards seemed to the audience to be a delightful alternative to the indigenous Mayans’ rivers of blood and mountains of abandoned human sacrifices.
The cultures of the tribe of Mayans who lived in the forest versus the metropolitan Mayans were immensely different. Apocalypto highlights the stark differences in culture, beliefs, and norms. The remote first tribe seemed to be thriving until the arrival of their vile captors who brought them back to a land wrought with savages, drought, and poverty.
Though the language throughout the movie remained consistent with each tribe, the lives they lead were totally opposite.
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