Mad Mel of the Apocalypto

How Mad Is Mad Mel? Waiting for 'Apocalypto'Mr. Gibson’s new film, “Apocalypto,” was already one of the most talked-about of the season, largely because of the Crazy Mel factor. Even for him, the oddball quotient is high. An action movie set in the dying days of the Maya civilization, the 15th century, “Apocalypto” was made in the Yucatec dialect without a single recognizable actor, and shot in the jungles of Mexico, where heavy rains slowed production and postponed its planned release from this summer. Photos from the set showed that Mr. Gibson had grown a full beard and let its central white streak grow longer than the rest, as if defiantly choosing to look like an aging eccentric.

As a director, he has been some kind of mad genius so far, anticipating what audiences want with startling clarity: making a sword-and-sandals epic when it was no longer fashionable, yet winning Oscars (including best director) for “Braveheart” (1995); turning what seemed a gigantic folly—a gruesome, subtitled, self-financed passion play—into a $600 million worldwide blockbuster with “The Passion” (2004). But those photos from Mexico and the subject of “Apocalypto”—the hero, called Jaguar Paw, is chosen as a human sacrifice and makes a fast-paced escape through the rain forest—were enough to make anyone wonder whether Mr. Gibson had finally gone around the bend and turned into some cinematic Kurtz, lost in the dark jungle.Will it be about the savagery of Indians, or the savagery of all people, including us?The film’s Web site, put up months ago, still heralds it as “a heart-stopping mythic action-adventure,” and the trailer (a notoriously unreliable guide, but all we have) suggests it is squarely aimed at fans of “Braveheart.” As Jaguar Paw races through the jungle pursued by torch-bearing warriors, the movie seems fraught with the kind of action that makes Yucatec or any other language superfluous. There will be subtitles, but Mr. Gibson, who wrote the screenplay with his former assistant, Farhad Safinia, has said there isn’t much dialogue anyway. Some actors have extravagantly painted faces, while others are caked with white powder from a lime quarry. There is romance, or at least there has been sex: we see Jaguar Paw look tenderly at a pregnant woman. And a huge crowd scene at a Mayan temple is presided over by a man with clawlike nails straight from a horror film.

More mysteriously, in May Mr. Gibson told Time magazine, “The fearmongering we depict in this film reminds me a little of President Bush and his guys.” That adds an intriguing, media-ready frisson, but now even attacks on the Bush administration can’t displace the Mel Meltdown in any discussion of “Apocalypto.” Mr. Gibson’s drunken comments and his two public statements of apology have landed in a changed world of celebrity gossip and Internet speculation, which won’t let this story fade.Only time will tell.