(Colombia/Venezuela/Argentina,
125 min.)
Dir. Ciro
Guerra, Writ. Ciro Guerra, Jacques Toulemonde Vidal
Starring: Nilbio Torres, Jan Bijvoet, Anontio Bolivar,
Brionne Davis, Yauenkü Migue
A snake is one slippery, spectacular creature. Embrace of the Serpent is equally elusive. This Colombian odyssey
and nominee for Best Foreign Language Film in this year’s Oscar race refuses to
take a straight line. It’s as windy and slithery as a serpent and it speaks
with a forked tongue.
Director/co-writer Ciro Guerra (The Wind Journeys) unfolds these two odysseys with a hallucinatory
rhythm that escapes time or logic. The film draws upon the diaries of the two
explorers, but it firmly rejects their straightforward narratives in favour of
the unwritten experience of indigenous warriors like Karamakate, who carry the
story of their people within themselves. The film adopts a tone of oral
storytelling as Karamakate’s journeys down the river unfurl in an episodic
structure. Déjà vu ripples throughout the film as the older man recalls similar
stories that he shared with another traveller in a much younger life. The
history books tell one story, but the film offers another.
Karamakate watches the action that happens on the shores of
the Amazon with skeptical curiosity. Through his eyes, the actions of the
German and Spanish explorers and colonists don’t portray the same air of
victory that recorded narratives suggest. This trip through the Amazon is akin
to a descent into hell as Karamakate and his passengers witness the corruption
of a way of life and the devastation of a people. The gesture is as simple as
giving a compass to an indigene, which erases a natural sense of direction and
an aptitude for following the stars; more grave is the effect of organized
religion—that cursed devil—as Karamakate and his passengers witness two bizarre
tragedies that see missionaries run amok. One is the all-too-familiar story of
child abuse at the hands of priests, while another takes the ritual of feasting
on Christ’s body to new extremes. The journey is both serene and surreal as
Guerra devises scenarios that arise like living nightmares.
Told in a mix of Spanish and Amazonian dialect, Embrace of the Serpent puts two
generations in dialogue to challenge one’s notion of progress. As Karamakate
sees the ongoing ravages of capitalism, he also sees the native Colombians
ever-growing embrace of their colonial masters. The film offers a narrative of
resistance as Karamakate sees through the materialism and empiricism of his
passengers. To them, he might be a relic for a museum, but he casts an
intoxicating spell of timeless enchantment.
The film is doubly allegorical with cinematography by David
Gallego that captures the Amazon in exquisite black and white. The move is
curious since the lush green of the Amazon and the man colours of its flora and
fauna seem tailor-made for the big screen, but Embrace of the Serpent rejects the view of the setting as something
romantic and alluring. The film instead favours the raw, mythic power of the
waters and the ghosts that linger in the shadows. Guerro’s greyscale tapestry
evokes the fluidity of Brazil’s Cinema Novo with the mysterious charm of French
New Wave filmmaking.
Embrace of the Serpent
becomes stranger and dreamier the further one goes into the forest, for the
deeper one goes, the darker it gets. The strangeness of the film increases as
Karamakate “heals” his passengers, particularly Theo who suffers some sort of
near-fatal ailment, by blowing a powdery smoke up his nose. The effect injects
the viewer with hypnotic reverie—Embrace
of the Serpent is like licking a hallucinogenic frog and eating some
popcorn—as images and sounds whirl, putting jaguars, reptiles, and birds as
intense symbols of folklore, roots, tradition, and corruption. Don’t try to
make sense of it in a linear fashion, but rather drink it down and swim in its
intoxicating waters.
The abstract nature of the film poses a challenge for
viewers, but the rewards come in a cinematic hangover that becomes clearer as
time passes. It’s a journey into uncharted waters worth exploring.
Embrace of the Serpent opens Feb. 19 in Toronto (TIFF Lightbox),
Ottawa (Mayfair Theatre), Halifax (Carbon Arc Cinema), and on Feb 26 in Waterloo (Princess Cinema).