From the film Apocalypto
How does the epigraph at the start of the film, “Great civilizations are not destroyed from without but from within,” set a particular tone for how the viewer might understand the events depicted in the film?
Could this sentence be understood as exculpating the European conquest of the Maya and other Pre Columbian American cultures?
How is this film akin to a Western set in the Maya Empire?
How does the film's depiction of Maya culture send a message about the universal human capacity to commit atrocities?