During the first few shots after starting this movie I already got a sense that I was about to watch something special. The high contrast black/white imagery of the Amazonian jungle makes it look different. Not the humid, pressuring green which normally stands out, but a neutral environment the main character moves through. An area of the world which hasn’t been colored in yet, still has lots of things hidden, waiting to be discovered. It is 1900 and the German explorer Theo (Jan Bijvoet) is crossing the jungle together with his guide Manduca. He has fallen ill and only shaman Karamakate is the single person who can save him. Karamakate doesn’t trust Theo though as he is the shaman is the last of his people. The rest was murdered by white discoverers like Theo. Nevertheless, a fragile bond forms between them and they travel down the river, trying to find a rare plant.
The Amazon does something to people. Werner Herzog movies like Fitzcarraldo (in which a man wants to pull a boat over a mountain) or Aguirre, The Wrath of God (in which Spaniards are searching for El Dorado) show this. Herzog himself also discovered this while making the films as the documentary Burden of Dreams shows. In it he calls the jungle (although he loves it) a curse, a piece of land created by God in anger which is in harmony, a harmony of collective and overwhelming murder. El Abrazo de la Serpiente is about the effect Europeans have had in this area of the world, especially on the local people. This regularly results in shocking moments. The consequences of the rubber trade or trying to spread Christianity are made painfully clear. Not only when Theo is travelling around, but also in another story set a couple of decades later, where you witness the effect on the same places.
Director Ciro Guerra wanted to tell all these stories in one movie. He based it on two old travel diaries and the stories the locals have told. Out of respect for the Amazon he changed the detail to protect the people and nature. Because of that it has turned into something which feels like a vivid dream where you are pulled through various moments in time, witness the events which seem to have come out of nightmares but have actually happened in the past. An impressive film which might not be accessible for everyone, but did manage to enchant me.
I wasn’t sure about this one but the high praises for this intrigued me. I listen to Mark Kermode, a UK critic, and this is his fave of last year.
Give this a chance if you can!