The pit of Apocalypto

I was perhaps a slightly reluctant cinema goer when I went along to see Mel Gibson's 2006 epic, Apocalypto. The trailers and the general pre-release hype around the film - set in Central America during the declining period of the Mayan civilisation - didn't really grab me and its subject matter - a tribesman who must escape imprisonment and human sacrifice after the capture of his village - didn't appeal either. And it is fair to say that, over all, I found the film rather too long and rather too 'boyish' for my tastes.

*** Plot spoiler alert***

if you haven't seen Apocalypto, don't read
any further

But several years on from my one and only viewing, some of its scenes and themes remain with me in spite of my misgivings. As our hero Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood) is led away from the sacked and burning remains of his tribe's home, we know that he has hidden his heavily pregnant wife, Seven (Dalia Hernandez), and young son, Turtles Run, in the empty shaft of a deep sink hole. As the captives are herded to their unknown fate, one of their number spots the trailing vine that Jaguar Paw has left for his wife to enable her to climb out of the pit. Suspicious, he severs it and cuts off her only means of escape.

So whilst the main (and lengthy) action of the film now switches to the tribesmen and the gory horrors they endure at the hands of their captors, my female attention is wholly with Seven and her predicament at the bottom of the shaft; I am far less concerned with the fate of Jaguar Paw and his comrades, even though it is they that occupy screen for most of the rest of the film.

I cannot know whether a male viewer of Apocalypto would have the same preoccupation with the destiny of Seven as me or if the (undoubtedly stirring) derring-do of our band of conquered heroes, locked in mortal combat with their foes, takes precedent. I suspect the latter, because for all its sixteenth century setting, it is as fast a paced non-stop action-thriller as, say, The Bourne Identity.

If that is the case, then the film has perhaps 'not worked' for female audience members: what, in the male-eyed view, is very much a sub-plot delivering a useful slice of motivation (the fate of Seven) is, for women, the main focus. For me, no matter how many poisoned arrows are slung or heads gruesomely removed from shoulders on the top of the temple, I am still at the bottom of that sink hole with the pregnant woman.

Several years on and I still from time to time close my eyes and try to imagine how I would escape such a predicament. There I am, stuck at the bottom of a hole not of my own making or choosing. How can I claw my way out of it to the sun?

Of course, in the film, Jaguar Paw eventually escapes his captors and arrives to rescue Seven and Turtles Run (and the new baby which has been born in the meanwhile) in just the nick of time. But real life is rarely like that. Whether the pit we are in is one we have inadvertently dug ourselves or have accidentally stumbled into whilst our attention was occupied elsewhere, ninety nine times out of a hundred it will be only ourselves that we have to rely on to haul us back out again. So how do we do it?

One step at a time, one foot after another, one word following the next, and with our eyes fixed unwaveringly on the blazing light just up ahead at the end of the tunnel.