Charming and brutal

Brilliant and touching

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

This film is remarkable if not in the originality of it's content, in the pacing and presentation of the information. Consequently it is a potent and affecting educational piece and a perfect introduction to the history of the study of Mayan civilisation, and for more seasoned scholars a feast for the eyes in the cinematographic depiction of famous sites such as Palenque. This film ought to be the staple introduction to all schools in the world regarding this rich, mysterious and long misunderstood culture.Most significant in this film are the reconstructions of archaeologists and artists to first discover and document the famous sites (eg the Lid of Palenque), how they travelled and what equipment and techniques they used in order to document and better understand the obscure creative legacy remaining in stone carvings and architecture and other artifacts. In addition to this are re-enactments of Mayan ceremonies and every day activities which are feasts for the imagination in visualising the every day existence of this remarkable people.All in all a joy for those with even the slightest interest in ancient cultures! I take my hat off to the Canadian and other teams who contributed to this production.The only gripe is that the information documented is very basic and I did not learn anything new which I may have done had the production been stretched to two parts or feature length but hey, it's a TV show and does very well for what it is.