Mayan groups criticize new Gibson film

Last Updated: Thursday, December 7, 2006 4:52 PM ET
CBC Arts


Activists in Guatemala, once a part of the American Mayan empire that provides the setting for Gibson's Apocalypto — due for release this Friday in the U.S. and Canada — say the film presents an unflattering portrait of the culture.

"The director is saying the Mayans are savages," Lucio Yaxon, a human rights activist, told the BBC.

The criticism calls to mind reactions to Gibson's 2004 epic The Passion of the Christ, an often violent depiction of the final days of Jesus Christ that was accused by some of being anti-Semitic, even before Gibson's much-publicized outburst against a Jewish police officer in California earlier this year.

Apocalypto, which has drawn largely favourable reviews, tells the story of a young man struggling to flee the crumbling Mayan empire after being chosen to become a sacrifice to the gods.

Like The Passion, Gibson's new film does not shy away from gruesome violence, including scenes of human slayings and beheadings.

"Gibson replays … an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserved, in fact, needed, rescue," Ignacio Ochoa, director of the Nahual Foundation, which promotes Mayan culture, told the BBC.

Richard Hansen, a consulting archeologist for the film, told the BBC Gibson, who also co-wrote and produced but does not appear in the film, took pains to ensure it was historically accurate.

Latino and Native American groups in the U.S. have praised the film for its dialogue, which is spoken in Yucatec Maya, and for Gibson's casting of indigenous actors.