Love, Legacy, Contentment, and Natural Marriage portrayed in a fragile and perilous state of Nature.
Readership: All
Theme: Honoring Fathers
Author’s Note: Written on 2023/3/9.
Length: 1,100 words
Reading Time: 5.5 minutes + 1 video.
Apocalypto is a 2006 fiction movie directed by Mel Gibson, and starring no one you’re likely to have heard of, mostly because in order to keep the movie as authentic as possible Mel Gibson chose actors of various Native American tribal descents, none of whom were famous in 2006, nor have any of them hit the big time since then. The movie begins with the following quote:
“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”
~ W. Durant
Looking back, I get the feeling old Mel was trying to warn us.
“As a civilization comes to an end.”
Set in Yucatán around the year 1502, the movie’s main protagonist is Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), the son of a chief (Flint Sky, played by Morris Birdyellowhead) of a small tribe living in pre-Conquistador Mesoamerica. Their lives are as simple as only Stone Age tribesmen’s lives can be. They hunt, they make and raise families, they tell stories around the fire, and they tease each other mercilessly. That’s pretty much it. Don’t get me wrong, Gibson is not Rousseau, he doesn’t portray them as idyllic noble savages, but there is an admirable simplicity to their lives.
That all changes when Mayan slavers raid Jaguar Paw’s village. Compared with Jaguar Paw’s tribe, the Maya are sophisticated, technologically advanced, and insatiably cruel. They kill some of Jaguar Paw’s tribe, and capture the ones they think are valuable. Jaguar Paw hides his heavily pregnant wife and their toddler son in a sinkhole. Thanks to his quick thinking they evade capture, but it’s impossible for them to climb back out on their own, and Jaguar Paw gets captured by the slavers. Jaguar Paw must escape his captors and race back to his village to rescue his family before the unthinkable happens.
The main themes I saw in the movie are love, legacy, contentment, and natural marriage. I won’t go into too much detail, because there really isn’t much plot to this movie, and I don’t want to spoil what little plot is there. Not that I’m complaining. Once the action starts it never stops, and sometimes that’s all a movie needs to be great – a simple, coherent plot, lots of action, and a whole lot of heart.
Dalia Hernandez and Rudy Youngblood star in “Apocalypto” (2006). Photo Credit: Andrew Cooper, SMPS. Love is fairly obvious, so let’s start with legacy. In one scene, Jaguar Paw’s tribe meets another in the forest. It’s a tense scene. Both tribes are obviously acquainted with inter-tribal violence. Flint Sky, Jaguar Paw’s father, attempts to diffuse the tension with the following introduction.
“I am Flint Sky. I have hunted this forest from the day I came of age. My father hunted this forest with me and before me. Jaguar Paw, my son, he hunts this forest with me. He will hunt it with his son after I am gone.”
That’s a legacy. Even though our lives are vastly different from theirs, we empathize with Flint Sky’s desire to continue his father’s legacy, and pass it on to his children and grandchildren. Our lives are short (theirs were even shorter). If we get to see our grandchildren, that’s a huge blessing.
5 The Lord bless you out of Zion,
Psalms 128:5-6
And may you see the good of Jerusalem
All the days of your life.
6 Yes, may you see your children’s children.
Peace be upon Israel!
Children’s children are the crown of old men,
Proverbs 17:6
And the glory of children is their father.
Isn’t that what every good father wants?
More importantly, why would Jaguar Paw return for his family? Obviously, the Maya know where his village is, so his odds of reaching them before the Maya raiders intercept him are pretty much nonexistent. Why not run in a completely different direction and start over somewhere else?
Love and legacy.
Yeah, I know that in real life there would be practical considerations, but love and legacy are the reasons this fictional movie presents.
What about contentment? I don’t want to give too much away, so I’ll recommend that you pay close attention to the story that Jaguar Paw’s tribal elder tells at the camp fire. It reminds me of this Proverb.
Hell and Destruction are never full;
Proverbs 27:20
So the eyes of man are never satisfied.
The decadence of the Mayans contrasts powerfully with the simplicity of Jaguar Paw’s tribe. By “decadence”, I mean that they have the luxury to ignore reality (so they think). The Maya can afford to pretend that their rituals and incantations change reality. Jaguar Paw and his tribe don’t have that luxury. They can’t talk an animal into becoming their next meal. They either hunt it down or they starve. They have no choice but to deal with reality as it is, not as they wish it to be. Guess who’s happier.
That leaves natural marriage. As Jack has pointed out before, you don’t need two Christians to make a marriage that follows the headship / submission, Christ / Church framework. We recognize such marriages in Jaguar Paw’s tribe, despite the fact that they have absolutely no concept of Christ or the Church. How is this possible? Because God wrote His Law in their hearts (Romans 2:12-16).
One of my favorite scenes shows Jaguar Paw lying awake with his wife – their toddler son sleeping peacefully beside them – watching his baby “dance” in his wife’s belly. Every married father can relate to that scene.
We also recognize some of the negatives of marriage, such as struggles with infertility and in-laws. Watch for a bitter-sweet exchange between one of Jaguar Paw’s peers and his nagging mother-in-law. It’s one of the saddest scenes in the entire movie.
Closing Statements
I do recommend watching Apocalypto with your older kids, especially teenage boys, and discussing the themes you see with them. Beware that the violence in Apocalypto is not the typical stylized Hollywood violence. The Conquistadors were shocked by the orgies of savagery they found in the Mayan empire. It was so bad that many tribes joined the Spaniards in defeating the Maya. Apocalypto portrays that violence realistically.
Apocalypto is an underrated movie. It pretty much flew under the radar back when it was released. If you enjoy movies with a lot of action and a lot of heart that honor fathers, I highly recommend that you give it a try. You can find it streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
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