It didn’t win the Oscar, but this year’s Foreign Language nominee “Embrace of the Serpent” will find an audience. This unexpected movie from Colombia is a trippy experience.
The film takes place in the Amazon forest in two different times: Part of it is set in the early 20th century, when a deathly ill European explorer (Jan Bijvoet) is taken in hand by an indigenous man named Karamakate (played by Nilbio Torres).
Karamakate is the last of his tribe, and he’s understandably wary of the visitor. Yet he guides the man into the jungle to search for a rare plant that might help cure him.
Some 40 years later, we see another stranger, an American (Brionne Davis), arrive in the same vicinity. Karamakate (now played by Antonio Bolivar), a leathery survivor, is once again tasked with helping a suspicious character.
Each story line is a journey through jungles and up rivers. The natural world is contrasted with the evidence of the European incursion — none more harrowing than the twisted spectacle of a deranged “holy man” who rules over his native followers with complete brutality.
Director Ciro Guerra took inspiration from the real-life experiences of explorers in the Amazon. But the film is far from a simple National Geographic take on native culture.
Nor is it the usual set-up for the Hollywood version of this story, where we follow a white man into an exotic world. Our point of reference is Karamakate, and his closeness to nature. (The performers who play him are first-time actors, both of whom possess remarkable presence.)
The film’s style isn’t straightforward, either. For one thing, it’s in widescreen black-and-white, as though to deny us the lush beauty of the rain forest while forcing us to think about the issues at hand.
And the longer it goes on, the more non-realistic the film becomes. It’s almost as though the super-sharp focus on the jungle has a hallucinatory effect — perhaps like the miracle herb everybody’s searching for.
Every time the film gets obvious in its anti-colonial perspective, it draws you in with its mesmerizing look and skin-crawly sound design. You might feel a little drugged walking out of this movie, a completely understandable (and not unpleasant) reaction.
“Embrace of the Serpent” (3 stars)
Deep in the Amazon jungle, a native — the last of his tribe — warily aids two different European visitors in two time periods. This Oscar-nominated Colombian film scores its anti-colonial points, but is strongest when drawing the viewer in with the hallucinatory power of the jungle itself — memorably visualized here in black and white. In Spanish and English, with English subtitles.
Rating: Not rated; probably PG-13 for violence, subject matter
Showing: SIFF Cinema Uptown
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