MEL GIBSON
Daily Telegraph - January 2007

So I finally got around to seeing Apocalypto. And all I can say is this: Gibson's Mayan history might be dodgy, his taste for violence disturbingly seductive and his appearance approaching Unabomber, but one thing no one can accuse him of is being a bad filmmaker.

Apocalypto is one of the greatest action movies ever made. Seriously, run, don't walk, to your nearest cinema.

Why it hasn't been as big as Die Hard or Gladiator is baffling but might be explained by several factors, not least of which the fact it's in a Mayan dialect. But surely the greatest impediment to the film's commercial success has been its ambiguous critical reception, grounded in the inability of critics to separate the man from the work.

The notion that great artists are supposed to be morally good and politically consistent has always struck me as one of the odder assumptions of our society. If we enjoyed only the work of the kind-hearted and politically sound, we'd be stuck with nothing more than the films of Susan Sarandon and the Cliff Richard back catalogue.

Artists have always been lunatics given to behaviour ranging from the intemperate to downright evil. Caravaggio, the greatest painter of the Baroque, was a pederast and murderer. Phil Spector, possibly the finest and most influential record producer ever, is on trial for allegedly shooting his girlfriend. Wagner called Gibson's anti-Semitism and raised him one by writing essays in which he said that Jews couldn't write music or speak properly.

On the scale of “demented genius who does horrid things”, Gibson rates somewhere between Lord Byron and Pee Wee Herman.

The condemnations of Apocalypto have been vociferous and the praise grudging. Everything Gibson does is scrutinised for evidence of anti-Semitism or “Catholic fundamentalism”. In the UK's Guardian, a lecturer of philosophy at Oxford and Anglican minister wrote that it was a “Christian snuff movie” in which the Mayan temples represented Jewish ones at the time of Christ.

With intellectual leadership like this it's little wonder the Church of England has such booming attendance figures.

Gibson is a bi-polar alcoholic with a mad dad. In any other circumstance he'd have had Hollywood's sympathy. What really disappoints taste-makers about Gibson, however, is not his manic rantings - which have also included gays, women and the English - but his almost unbearable sincerity and emotional neediness.

In a Hollywood populated by slick phonies Gibson's loopy sincerity makes us nervous. Cynics, after all, don't make eccentric historical epics in ancient languages with their own money or help drug-addled freaks like Courtney Love; they become the Governor of California.

With Apocalypto, Gibson has proved himself the real deal, a true artist. I predict that in a few decades all that has made him famous before now will be remembered only as a prelude to what is to come.

© Brendan Shanahan 2008