Apocalypto, take 2

This review from Slant Magazine proves that there are others who noticed the Christian imagery in Apocalypto, though this particular reviewer isn't happy with the movie nor with Mel Gibson. But at least he mentioned some of the things I forgot to mention in my previous post:

Gibson views Jaguar Paw as a Christ-like figure, staging his kidnapped people's journey from their village to the Mayan stronghold not unlike Jesus's journey to the cross. Gibson has no interest in extolling the riches of the Mayan culture, only its vile decadence (to the director, this was a culture that deserved to be conquered), [...] On their journey, they will encounter a little girl who is shrouded in mystery (she hovers over a dead woman, ostensibly her mother, marks on both their bodies that may or may not have come from the white man) and who throws a fierce prophecy to the wind. It is as if she were warning of Christ's resurrection. Indeed, when Jaguar Paw escapes his captors, who hold court like Herod and celebrate the day like the people of Babel, or the Temple of Doom (take a whiff the emperor's fat-little-piggy son, then dig that shot from the point-of-view of a decapitated head!), Gibson imagines Jaguar Paw like Jesus at the very end of Passion of the Christ: the original last-action hero. But there is a difference between Christ and Jaguar Paw: Though he busts a move like a sick motha, Jaguar Paw doesn't so much itch for vengeance as he thrills for survival. Apocalypto finds something spiritual in dramatic juxtapositions of emotion. As Jaguar Paw, a lethal weapon of a man, returns to his village, his vigilance is contrasted with that of his wife, who struggles, on the brink of giving birth, in her stone pit against the forces of mother nature—killing an ape-like creature, ingeniously stitching up a wound on her son's leg with decapitated ant jaws, and trying to stay above water when it begins pouring. [...] When Gibson allows for scenes such as Blunted's mother-in-law, after she isn't sold into slavery by the Mayans, connecting emotionally for the first time with her son-in-law in the face of their hopeless spiritual depletion, the director recalls the great Mary-Jesus flashbacks from Passion of the Chris, offering us a glimpse of that heart he otherwise delights in ripping from people's chests

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