Latin America
Related: About this forum‘Embrace of the Serpent,’ an angry, poetic Oscar nominee: 3.5 stars
March 10, 2016 7:00 AM
Embrace of the Serpent, an angry, poetic Oscar nominee: 3.5 stars
Colombian film competed for a best foreign language film award
Worlds collide deep in the Amazon
Its a celebration of the lost and destroyed tribes of the region
By Kenneth Turan
Los Angeles Times
Beautiful, strange, disturbing, Embrace of the Serpent is a film with a lot on its mind. Set in Colombias Amazonian jungle and a foreign language Oscar nominee, its simultaneously a lament, a warning and a celebration of the lost and destroyed tribes of that region, all the people we will never know.
Those words come from director and co-writer (with Jacques Toulemonde) Ciro Guerra, who, along with cinematographer David Gallego, has crafted a strikingly photographed black-and-white epic that intertwines a passionate attack on the depredations of invasive capitalism with a potent adventure story about not one but two trips down that river into a Conradian heart of darkness.
Separated by 40 years, each trip features a different Western scientist, one German and one American, each accompanied by the same native shaman, Karamakate (played, because of the age gap, by two actors). Both men are looking for the same thing, the sacred psychedelic Yakruna plant, but Embrace of the Serpent is not a film about destinations but one that involves us in journeys in the most intimate way.
The first Colombia film to feature an indigenous protagonist and the first to be shot in that countrys Amazon in more than 30 years, Embrace is a deep dive into another place and time as well as a different, non-Western way of experiencing reality.
More:
http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/movies-news-reviews/article64957897.html
villager
(26,001 posts)Though presumably the DVD release should be imminent.
Judi Lynn
(160,516 posts)It's such a treasure when good films are released focusing on the other Americas.
Thanks for your personal view.