Apocalypto Film Breakdown

Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto" takes place in pre-Columbian America, with the fall of the Mayan empire. This movie (and Mel Gibson) is notorious for it's "bending" of factual and historical evidence in order to sell visuals and plot. For this study however, I was mainly looking at how Gibson used elements of Mayan culture to influence the aesthetic of the movie and create depth. I won't sit here and describe to you the plot in long detail, as it isn't my aim here. My goal here is to define a few particularly strong ways in which Mel Gibson and his art direction team can imbue the Mayan culture, and how these techniques add depth and story telling to each scene.

Physical Character Influence

The film opens to a tribe of Mayan warriors hunting in the Mesoamerican rainforest.

These 4 characters are considered the protagonists of the movie, as they struggle against rival tribes and the dangers of the forest around them. Straight away the audience knows this is a collective tribe through visual cues: all the members have long, dark hair all worn in a similar fashion. The materials used in the tribesman's necklaces and body jewellery are all of similar origin, and look to be local materials such as bone, wood and plant strains. Looking closely, the tribe all have similar body scarification on their upper abdomen too. This is a good yet silent indication that all these characters belong to the same tribe, a point which is pretty important to the narrative, as the film features hundreds of native american and Mayan actors, so it is a strong feature that helps the viewer tell each character/tribe apart.

This is the opposing tribe. Note the drastically different hairstyles, bold facial modifications and surlier dispositions. The audience sees this tribe and thinks "these guys mean business".

This tribe has bold chest tattoos, mainly strong geometric pieces (as were popular in Mayan times).

Their facial/ear jewellery is harsher, with larger stretched ears mostly made from bone. The use of more bone on these characters injects connotations of hostility and creates an ideology of threat.

We see the bone, we think "oh damn son what did he kill to get that".

Clothing comparison

Above: Material Studies