Apocalypto Now... er, yesterday actually

I watched Apocalypto last night. It was a pretty disturbing movie, I really was hoping for a lot more. I didn’t know much about the movie prior to watching it, all I knew was the Mayan setting. I have some general interest in the anthropology of Amerindian cultures and history, so I thought the movie would be some type of crash course in current thinking of the Maya, with an obvious slant towards entertainment and not education. I would much prefer to read up on the subject but my spare time allotted to reading is pretty much restricted to glancing at a few magazines.

As for the movie, it contained a gross amount of violence and pretty much depicted the Mayans as a depraved bunch of sadistic people. The movie also played against a couple of fears of mine: drastic environmental change and damage, and the barbarism that people can resort to when hope is abandoned. Those two aspects made the movie uncomfortable for me.