O Abraço da Serpente

I love how this movie is put together. By combining the accounts of two explorers - over 30 years apart - it manages to tell a story of a world changing. You can see how actions made by the first explorer directly changes the world of the people they meet. Mostly in a bad way. The movie conveys, with a sadness, how much the people of these tribes lost because of the way they were handled by "white people". But this is not the time tested "gone with the wolves"-story. It's an artistic and stylistic, yet believable, account of the old meeting the new.

One thought though: While it is an interesting discussion why it's in black and white, I think the movie would have been better off in color. At least partly. Black and white is nice, but the jungle scenery in this movie could have been breathtaking in color - but the again, maybe that's the point.

A very good movie which reflects the tragic history of peoples Amazon between the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Us shows the messianic movements of indigenous peoples, exploitation, ill treatment and killings carried out by the rubber, the indoctrination by the missionaries, the Colombo-Peruvian war, etc. It also gives us a glimpse of the culture of these peoples, the use of powerful hallucinogens in ritual ceremonies to communicate with the spirits of nature, knowledge of the environment, importance of the river and the jungle and the anaconda and jaguars. Finally a production well documented and that through a history very well achieved introduces us to cosmology and history of the peoples Amazon.

Interesting look at the lifestyle of the Amazon people in the vanishing jungle where a shaman deals with two diverse characters , being first Colombian film nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film . The amazing story of the relationship between Karamakate (Nilbio Torres -Young Karamakate-, Antonio Bolívar -Old Karamakate- and all the natives of the film are natural actors) and two scientists who seek a magic plant , Theo (Jan Bijvoet) and Evan (Brionne Davis) . As decades apart , an Amazonian shaman and last survivor of his people , and two scientists who work together over the course of 40 years to search the Amazon for a sacred healing flower . It's based on two true stories, linked together by one remarkable man and , perhaps, the most famous, celebrated river in the world, the Amazon . And the man is Karamakate, the last shaman of his jungle tribe . We first meet him in 1940 , deep into his sixties as played by Antonio Bolivar, when he encounters a man foreign to his home, an American scientist Richard Evans Schultes (Brionne Davis) . The rain forest of the Amazon are disappearing at the rate of 5000 acres day . Four million Indians once lives there , nowadays 120.000 remain .

Embrace Of The Serpent is one such cinematic experience which brought a deserved Academy Award Nomination . Ecological thriller that has in highlighting the destruction of the South American rain woods by the rubbers ; being based upon a real story , on diaries by scientists Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evan Schultes , both of whom delve into the Amazonian rainforest in search of a rare plant with medicinal and hallucinatory qualities, with the assistance of a local shaman on opposite ends of his own life journey . An ecological adventure with mystical touches that was ahead of its time in denounce about forest destruction , including some disconcerting scenes , as the frames where a man is praised to be the Messiah is based on an actual event . Embrace of the Serpent attempts to frame the destruction of the rain forest's ecology and peoples as a slow-motion tragedy on scales both personal and cultural , but it is more intriguing in its ambitions, which frustrate it, than in it successes, which are limited . This exciting film contains thrills , emotion , adventure and marvelous scenes from deep rainy forest that generate a lot of surprises and illusion . This film has got some images "stuck in their head" including several sequences can stay in your brain for a long, long while .

Glamorous and lush cinematography by David Gallego who photographs wonderfully the Amazon jungle , obviously filmed under difficult conditions on location . Shot in black-and-white, which is at once visually distinctive but also rather flattening . Evocative musical score by Nascuy Linares and the music Evan plays on the gramophone is Haydn's "The Creation". This engrossing and enjoyable film with interesting screenplay by Ciro Guerra and Jacques Toulemonde Vidal was well directed by Ciro Guerra . He's a good professional filmmaking giving various Colombian successes such as Los Viajes Del Viento (2009) and La Sombra Del Caminante (2004) . Rating "Embrace of the Serpent" : Better than average . Wholesome watching .

Honestly, how this didn't get one iota of the hype that Son of Saul got is beyond me. As far as I'm concerned, the real winner of that Oscar for foreign-language film. It's so incredibly fixating and transportive in the world it creates. The cinematography is exquisite, the sound design impressive, and the directorial achievement here is just incredible. I never entirely understood everything that was going on, but it didn't stop the film from fully capturing me. The acting is also uniformly strong, and the film could have been even more confusing had it not been to the spectacular editing, which did a great job going from one storyline to the next, and one timeline to the other. I just think this is a really magical, really special film. It deserves to be seen by many more people than it has.

In early 20th century, Theodor von Martius is a German ethnographer from University of Tübingen cataloging the tribes of the Amazon. He gets sick and is brought to shaman Karamakate by his native guide Manduca. Karamakate distrusts the white men who cruelly run their rubber plantations or missionaries wiping out the native culture. He believes that he's the last of his tribe until Theo tells him about an isolated group of survivors. He guides them back to his former home to find a yakruna plant. About thirty years later, Evan arrives looking for Karamakate. He tells him that Theo died later and Manduca brought his diaries back to Germany to be published. Karamakate claims to be suffering from memory loss and only a hollowed shell copy called chullachaqui.

The river journey is something like the Heart of Darkness. It portrays a harrowing vision of the struggles of the native community. It is enthralling. It is poetic. The characters are compelling. The only minor drawback is the ending which gets overextended. There is probably a quicker and more compelling way to wrap up the movie after what happened in the village. I like the surrealism in the end but it's just a little long.