Culture Shocker

The "Apocalypto" director got the tattoos and weaponry right, but scholars say he did a hatchet job on an advanced people. (By Andrew Cooper -- Icon Distribution)

"I can promise you that there will be a massive repudiation of this film, not only as a work of fiction, but as a systematic and willful misrepresentation of the Maya," says David Freidel, archaeology professor at Southern Methodist University.

Tough talk, but Gibson has taken heat in the past and come out way ahead. As he did in "The Passion of the Christ," which employed spoken Aramaic, Gibson's players in "Apocalypto," many of them indigenous people and non-actors, speak an ancient language. In this case, it's one of the extant Maya languages called Yucatek, which along with Gibson's skill as a filmmaker, may enhance the verisimilitude of "Apocalypto."

Gibson declined to be interviewed by The Washington Post, but in production notes, the writer-producer-director states that his initial goal was to create a "high-velocity action-adventure chase film" and that he then sought an ancient culture in which to set his go-fast story. The Maya appealed to him, Gibson says, because he sees parallels between the collapse of the ancient Maya civilization and our own. "It was important for me to make that parallel because you see these cycles repeating themselves over and over again," Gibson says. "People think that modern man is so enlightened, but we're susceptible to the same forces."

Gibson's consultant on the project was Richard Hansen, a respected Mayanist and professor at Idaho State University, as well as the president of the Foundation for Anthropological Research and Environmental Studies, which does preservation work and study in Guatemala. Gibson, a generous contributor to the group, now serves on its board of directors.

Hansen defends the film, believing that his fellow Mayanists will be "pleasantly surprised." He says, "For the most part it is very accurate," and "I was amazed at the level of detail, the stone tools, gourds, iguana skins, strung up turkeys, just amazed." Yet, he adds, "there were things I didn't like that they went ahead and did anyway," and he agrees "there was a lot of artistic license taken," and that there is a mash-up of architectural styles, art, costume and ritual from different time periods during the millennium-long Maya reign.

And the sacrifice, the gore, the Maya as savage? The film does "give the feeling they're a sadistic lot," Hansen says. "I'm a little apprehensive about how the contemporary Maya will take it."

"Apocalypto" tells the story of Jaguar Paw, a young hunter who lives in a primordial forest, and is taken captive by a raiding party, marched to the city, slathered in blue paint and hauled up to the blood-soaked altar at the top of a pyramid to have his heart and skull removed by a shaman for his slit-eyed king. But wait! Jag Paw escapes -- and then it's a chase movie.

So where do the Maya end and where does Mel begin?

? Gibson shows grisly human sacrifice. And yes, indeed, the Maya were into it. Let us count the ways: decapitation, heart excision, dismemberment, hanging, disembowelment, skin flaying, skull splitting and burning.

But: The humans being chopped into nibbles were more likely to be royals and elites, not common forest dwellers like the film's Jaguar Paw and crew. "They didn't run around rounding up ordinary people to sacrifice," Houston says.