The Myth of Crazy Mel began seeping out of Hollywood long before he was arrested for drunken driving on July 28 and burst out with the ugly, anti-Semitic comments that have put him in extreme damage-control mode. A 2004 episode of South Park about The Passion of the Christ depicts him as a looney-tunes guy bouncing off the walls in his underwear and whooping. Mel Gibson is "crazy, dude," one South Park kid tells another. "Mel's crazy, but I like him," a name-dropping billionaire says in Bruce Wagner's latest Hollywood novel, Memorial (released this month but written pre-meltdown).

And 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 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 of the Christ (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 Gibson had finally gone around the bend and turned into some cinematic Kurtz, lost in the dark jungle.

The film is still being edited, so there's no way to know whether Apocalypto might be crazy-brilliant or just crazed. But we know from his recent mug shot that Gibson has lost the beard. (As those things go, it's a glamour shot, showing that some actors can play to the camera no matter how high their blood alcohol level.) And we know that his drunken Malibu tirade casts an inescapable shadow over the film's opening, raising many questions, including: Will Apocalypto really arrive on Dec. 8? As recently as last week Touchstone, the Disney division releasing it, insisted it would.

That's about all the studio will say about a movie that must have become an albatross, because the crucial question is: How can this film be marketed? Gibson's name and ability to chat up Apocalypto was its only real selling point. Now he trails apologies and questions about bigotry wherever he goes, which will make it pretty hard to stay on message about old Jaguar Paw.

Whatever happens with Apocalypto, it would be unfair if his personal debacle were to overshadow Gibson's immense gifts and accomplishments as a director. Apart from commercial success, his films have been rich with action, emotion and visual interest. The Man Without a Face (1993) wasn't the safest or easiest choice for a first-time director. He cast himself as a former teacher whose face is horribly disfigured on one side, and whose innocent relationship as mentor to a teenage boy is questioned. The film may not be as gripping as it should be, but the camera moves fluidly in this pretty-looking period piece, set in Maine in 1968, and the delicate subject is not overplayed until Gibson gives himself one scenery-chewing monologue near the end. You can almost feel him finding has way as a director while yearning to burst the limits of the movie's small scale.

By the time he got to Braveheart, just two years later, even the logo for his production company, Icon, looked better. By far the best of his three pre-Apocalypto films, this epic sounds as silly as ever when described, and the warrior's blue face paint that Gibson wears as William Wallace, the 13th-century Scottish freedom fighter, has become the laziest of Mel jokes. Yet Braveheart still works as a big, enormously satisfying popcorn movie.

Gibson brings all his star power to the screen, convincingly taking Wallace from romance to brutal vengeance when his wife is killed; the scope and relentless pace of the battle sequences remain thrilling.

And in hindsight we can spot two elements that have become his trademark: torture scenes on screen and controversy off. When Wallace is tortured and martyred before a crowd in a prolonged scene at the end, the visceral depiction of suffering leads straight to The Passion of the Christ.

The Passion remains difficult to sit through because of its extremely graphic scenes of Jesus' torture: We see his flesh ripped off as he is scourged; early in the film one eye is swollen shut, and by the end his face glows red with blood. But this is exactly the film Gibson set out to make — unsubtle, grisly and disturbing — and it's easy to respect him for his uncompromising vision. You can't miss how deeply felt and eccentric a project it was, with a spark of zealotry that goes beyond simple faith. Yet The Passion of the Christ also gives new meaning to preaching to the converted. The film never proselytizes; it simply speaks forcefully to an audience of believers.

The charges of anti-Semitism leveled at The Passion, primarily because of a scene in which the Jewish crowd calls for Jesus' death, have come back to haunt Gibson now. There were equally wrongheaded attacks calling Braveheart homophobic because of a scene in which the English king, Longshanks, pushes his gay son's lover out a tower window. In both cases Gibson's critics confused the characters with the director. Any homophobia in Braveheart comes from Longshanks, who also resented the political influence the lover was gaining. And both Caiphas, the Jewish high priest, and Pilate, the weak-willed Roman governor, bear responsibility for Jesus' death in The Passion. The fault line is not between Jews and Romans but between believers and nonbelievers.

Of course, during his highway arrest, it was Mel Gibson himself, not some character, who spouted anti-Semitic remarks. And in the way that news reports about Gibson's ultraconservative Catholicism and comments by his father, Hutton Gibson, denying the extent of the Holocaust bled into the reception for The Passion, so his current off-screen problems are likely to deflect attention from Apocalypto.

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 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 claw-like nails straight from a horror film.

More mysteriously, in May 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. 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.

Internet chatter and celebrity magazines probably won't lead many people to decide whether to see Apocalypto or not, though. Loyal Gibson fans will view this as a sad story of alcoholism, forgive him and buy their tickets. Others will reject the apologies as mere spin and think his anti-Semitic outburst proves what The Passion led them to suspect; but then, any viewer incensed by The Passion isn't likely to go to Apocalypto in the first place.

Apocalypto is not as big a financial nightmare for Disney as it could have been. Gibson's production company financed the film (the budget is reportedly under $50 million), and Disney has only domestic distribution rights. But that arrangement is costly enough. Legally bound to release the film, the studio has no choice but to tough it out.

In his second apology Gibson said there was "no excuse" for his remarks. And the issue of whether he is truly anti-Semitic is ultimately between him and his conscience. But that statement, asking for forgiveness and help from Jews in his recovery, was the shrewdest public relations gambit he could have made in a dire situation. It puts anyone who doubts his sincerity or refuses his apology in the camp of the unforgiving; who wants to be there?

And while the moviegoing audience might be tickled by celebrity gossip, it doesn't really want to believe the worst of its stars. The Meltdown might even become a blip in his career. After all, atonement and forgiveness are as crucial to the Judeo-Christian tradition as money is to Hollywood's.

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