Embrace of the Serpent, 2015.
Directed by Ciro Guerra.
Starring Jan Bijyoet, Brionne Davis, Nilbio Torres and Antonio Bolivar.
SYNOPSIS:
Separated by 40 years, two explorers travel down the Amazon in search of the rare Yakruna plant, famed for its medicinal and psychedelic properties. Both are escorted by the same shamen, the last of his tribe, who takes them on a journey of discovery, not just of the landscape and the culture but, most importantly, themselves.
Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent is inspired by the real-life journals of two explorers who travelled through the Amazon rainforest, but were separated by four decades. In the context of the film, it’s the German Theo (Jan Bijyoet) who comes first, at the turn of the 20th century, in search of the rare Yakruna plant. Forty years later comes the American Evan (Brionne Davis) who, having read Theo’s journals, is following in his footsteps, but with a very different agenda.
The link between the two is the Amazonian shamen, Karamakate, who guides both of them, firstly as a young man (played by Nilbio Torres) and then as an older one (Antonio Bolivar). A solitary figure, he’s the last of his tribe. Over the years, his body paint doesn’t change, nor do his adornments, although he does lose his hair. He’s changed very little: still by himself, still protective of the Yakruna and still a man of his country and suspicious of the whites, as he calls them.
The experiences of the two explorers and their guide run in parallel, gliding almost imperceptibly from one to the other. On both journeys, there’s encounters with disturbing outposts of religion. A group of boys in the so-called care of a priest are discovered by Theo and the young Karamakate: it turns out that the holy man beats them mercilessly. Evan and the older shamen are escorted into another religious community, this time run by a white who believes he’s the Messiah. It’s a nightmarish vision, with some followers wearing pointed hessian hoods, forerunners of the Klan. Both groups are as corrupt and perverse as each other – and both are upturned by Karamakate and his white charge.
The black and white photography is startling and brilliant. You simply don’t expect such a lush landscape to be shot in this way, but Guerra isn’t interested in colour. What he’s doing is to re-create the photographs of the original explorers. It’s almost as if he’s put a movie camera in the hands of their counterparts on the big screen. The photographs at the end of the film show just how close to reality Guerra has come – the explorers with the locals, Karamakate’s tall roofed house. There’s also a breathtaking aerial shot of the rain forest with the river snaking through it, disguising the destruction already spreading under its canopy.
It’s all enormously seductive and the serpent wraps itself around you in minutes. It has a hypnotic quality, rather like the Yakruna itself, but the film isn’t all beauty and poetry: colonialism and exploitation linger like a dark thunder cloud and there is plenty of physical evidence, from the scarred rubber trees to the petrified plantation worker who bears his own scars, including the stump where his arm used to be.
The messages are multiple and complex: colonialism, religion, environment, self-knowledge, tolerance ….. the list goes on. The tragedy is that the indigenous people we see portrayed here are long gone and all that remains of their story are the two journals that inspired this film. Many more stories are simply lost in time.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Freda Cooper – Follow me on Twitter, check out my movie blog and listen to my podcast, Talking Pictures.
. url=”.” . width=”100%” height=”150″ iframe=”true” /]
https://youtu.be/b7Ozs5mj5ao?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published June 8, 2016. Updated November 10, 2019.
