“It is not possible for me to know if the infinite jungle has started on me the process that has taken many others to complete and irremediable insanity. In this case, I can only apologise and ask you for your understanding, for the display I witnessed in those enchanted hours was such that I find it impossible to describe in words its beauty and splendor; all I know is that, when I came back, I had become another man.”
The ‘infinite jungle’ that German ethnologist and explorer Theodor Koch-Grunberg is referring to in his opening words is the Amazon; the year is 1909 and he and an Amazonian shaman, Karamakate, are travelling to find a rare yakruna, a sacred plant with unparalleled healing powers. Three decades later, Richard Schultes, an American biologist, enlists Karamakate on the same mission, inspired by the diaries of Grunberg.
Karamakate is the last of his people, as the sole survivor of Catholic missionaries and European rubber barons. On his initial voyage in 1909, we find a man stoic and suspicious of Grunberg, vocal of his vitriol towards the ‘whites’ and strict in keeping the traditions of his people alive. Grunberg appears to be dying, kept alive only by Karamakate’s medicine, the ‘Sun’s semen,’ a white powder blown into his nostrils. By the time Schultes embarks on the same journey in 1940, Karamakate is a broken man. His memories faded, his identity scattered to the wind, he stares blankly at the images he has carved into rock faces, barely able to recollect when or why he drew them.
Columbian director Ciro Guerra is admirably patient when passing between the two time periods, delicately mirroring the men’s odysseys. We see the same locations 31 years apart, perhaps most strikingly the Catholic boys commune, which homed the stolen local boys under the ‘tutelage’ of an over-zealous, cruel missionary whom Grunberg and Karamakate violently clash with. Later, we see the boys grown up, descended into the Dionysian madness of a cult that blends “the worst of both” the whites and the natives, including human sacrifice and cannibalism.
Guerra presents the Amazonian jungle as a character unto itself, capable of swallowing the entire story whole if it so desires, earning deserved comparisons to Herzog’s Aguirre: Der Zorn Gottes and Fitzcarraldo in the process. The characters are dwarfed by their surroundings, like fleas on the back of an agitated dog. In both time periods, as the characters venture deeper into the unknown, what little control they hold over their own fate and wellbeing slips further and further away.
Earning his country’s first Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, Guerra was incredibly unfortunate to lose out to the equally brilliant holocaust drama Son of Saul. His unique presentation of a story rich in tragic history and based, in part, on the real diaries of the two white explorers, patiently dangles between dazzling flights of fancy and stoic meditations on isolation before exploding into a blistering display of psychedelia. We’re transported both to the past and to the future, presented with a film neither of this time nor any other. It’s thought-provoking cinema that doesn’t preach; a gripping film that doesn’t pander.
While ostensibly Karamakate conforms to the superannuated attributes of the ‘noble savage’, Embrace of the Serpent is his film. A reflection of isolation, identity and a grim indictment of European colonialism, his film avoids the long speeches explaining how cruelly the native South Americans were treated. Instead we are shown the aftermath of their barbarity, etched into the countryside, into the young people left behind and into the face of the sole surviving Karamakate. You’d be hard pushed to find a more well-rounded character this year, as for all his contemplative stoicism, he often finds himself laughing at Grunberg’s over-emotional state when faced with his own mortality, most notably when dictating a letter to his wife back in Germany.
Embrace of the Serpent is as close to cinematic perfection as I have seen this year, or in recent history. Exploring what it really means to be civilized, owing as much to Herzog’s best work as it does to Coppola, whilst simultaneously being strikingly innovative. It’s rare that a film as mesmeric, absorbing and worthwhile as this comes along, filled with unforgettable, haunting imagery and an aesthetic poetry verging on the genius of Terrence Malick. It’s evocative, surreal, bizarre and unforgettable, but above all, Embrace of the Serpent is utterly original.
Embrace of the Serpent will be shown at Broadway Cinema until Thursday 23 June 2016.
Embrace of the Serpent Trailer
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