Gods, graves and Gibson

Mel Gibson may have said and done some pretty inexcusable things in the last few years, but good art needs no excuse, and if this advance report on his upcoming movie is even half true, I’m sure I’ll want to see it in a nice big theater as soon as possible.

When I saw that Gibson’s next directorial project was called Apocalypto, I assumed it was going to be a continuation of the anti-Semitic theo-sado-masochistic gore fest that was The Passion of the Christ. Instead, it turns out to be an epic about the great lost civilization of the Mayans. Moreover, it promises to be a visceral, bluntly violent story that takes the culture on its own terms, made with an emphasis on authenticity all the way down to the soundtrack. (Although the music on the trailer sounds like standard issue Hollywood huffing and puffing to me.)

This I want to see. Chalk it up to an early encounter with Gods, Graves and Scholars, C.W. Ceram’s great popular history of modern archaeology, which turned me into something of an archeology geek — particularly for the the Mesoamerican civilizations of the Mayans, the Aztecs and the Olmecs. (With its parade of inspired madmen and heroic tomb-robbers, Gods, Graves and Scholars reads like all three Indiana Jones movies rolled into one — it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that George Lucas was also a fan.) Ceram’s book led me to W.H. Prescott, who is to the Spanish conquest of the New World what Edward Gibbons is to the Roman Empire. And when Gary Jennings set out to evoke the blood-drenched flavor of Aztec civilization in three captivating novels, I was happy to wallow in each one. (By the way, another of Ceram’s books, The First American, led me to John Upton Terrell’s popular account of Cabeza de Vaca and his astonishing journey through the interior of North America. Another great subject for a movie, even though this 1991 production wouldn’t make you think so.)

It could turn out to be tripe — it’s not as though Gibson’s other films (Braveheart, The Man Without a Face) have rocked my world. But I’m a sucker for historical fiction, and if Gibson pulls this one off, it might just shave a few centuries off his time in Purgatory. You never know.