Embrace of the Serpent [El abrazo de la serpiente] **** (2015, Nilbio Torres, Jan Bijvoet, Antonio Bolivar, Brionne Davis) – Movie Review

This enthralling, spectacular looking historical adventure from Colombian director and writer Ciro Guerra (born 1981) is a fascinating contradiction. It is at once both chilly and emotional. It is poetical and political. It is both easily accessible (in a David Attenborough sort of way) and elusively mysterious (in a Werner Herzog sort of way).

And it is both bang up to date and relishably old-fashioned at the same time. It deals with today’s urgent issues of forest and river environmental destruction, of capitalist nations swallowing up indigenous cultures and of the relentless march of globalisation, though it is set at the beginning of the 20th century.

Mesmerisingly shot in beautiful black and white (though there is one colour sequence), this perfect old-school, visionary art movie, with its shades of Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Herzog and Tarkovsky, centres on Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and the last survivor of his people, and the two scientists who build a friendship with him over 40 years. It plays out in two interconnecting time frames, as Nilbio Torres stars as young Karamakate and Antonio Bolivar plays old Karamakate, and both of them are superb.

Guerra’s film and screenplay are inspired by the journals of the real-life explorers Theodor Koch-Grünberg and Richard Evans Schultes, who travelled through the Colombian Amazon during the last century in search of the sacred elusive psychedelic Yakruna healing plant. Jan Bijvoet plays Theodor and Brionne Davis is Schultes, and they are remarkable too. Torres and Bolívar as well as all the natives in the film give the natural performances of non-professional actors.

It is the first Colombian film nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Director Ciro Guerra and stars Brionne Davis and Antonio Bolivar on the river Mitu, Colombia.