The following contains material from the November 2015 review when the film was presented at the St. Louis International Film Festival.
We often hear people remark about how they’ve got a tune or melody “stuck in their head”. The same thing could be said for certain…magical…memorable films. An image or a sequence can stay in your brain for a long, long while. Embrace Of The Serpent is one such cinematic experience. It’s based on a true story. Oh wait, it’s based on two true stories, linked together by one remarkable man and, perhaps, the most famous, celebrated river in the world, the Amazon. And the man is Karamakate, the last shaman of his jungle tribe. We first meet him in 1940, deep into his sixties as played by Antonio Bolivar, when he encounters a man foreign to his home, an American scientist Richard Evans Schultes (Brionne Davis...
We often hear people remark about how they’ve got a tune or melody “stuck in their head”. The same thing could be said for certain…magical…memorable films. An image or a sequence can stay in your brain for a long, long while. Embrace Of The Serpent is one such cinematic experience. It’s based on a true story. Oh wait, it’s based on two true stories, linked together by one remarkable man and, perhaps, the most famous, celebrated river in the world, the Amazon. And the man is Karamakate, the last shaman of his jungle tribe. We first meet him in 1940, deep into his sixties as played by Antonio Bolivar, when he encounters a man foreign to his home, an American scientist Richard Evans Schultes (Brionne Davis...
- 3/11/2016
- by Jim Batts
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
More intriguing in its ambitions than in it successes, which are limited, and oddly keeps its distance from the very people it wants to enlighten us about. I’m “biast” (pro): nothing
I’m “biast” (con): nothing
(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)
Decades apart, two white scientists delve into the Amazonian rainforest in search of a rare plant with medicinal and hallucinatory qualities, with the assistance of a local shaman on opposite ends of his own life journey. Embrace of the Serpent attempts to frame the destruction of the rainforest’s ecology and peoples as a slow-motion tragedy on scales both personal and cultural, but it is more intriguing in its ambitions, which frustrate it, than in it successes, which are limited.
Colombian filmmaker Ciro Guerra and his cinematographer, David Gallego, shoot in black-and-white, which is at once visually distinctive but also rather flattening,...
I’m “biast” (con): nothing
(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)
Decades apart, two white scientists delve into the Amazonian rainforest in search of a rare plant with medicinal and hallucinatory qualities, with the assistance of a local shaman on opposite ends of his own life journey. Embrace of the Serpent attempts to frame the destruction of the rainforest’s ecology and peoples as a slow-motion tragedy on scales both personal and cultural, but it is more intriguing in its ambitions, which frustrate it, than in it successes, which are limited.
Colombian filmmaker Ciro Guerra and his cinematographer, David Gallego, shoot in black-and-white, which is at once visually distinctive but also rather flattening,...
- 2/28/2016
- by MaryAnn Johanson
- www.flickfilosopher.com
Ciro Guerra’s third feature Embrace of the Serpent is bracing for the novelty of its setting alone: a feature hasn’t been made in the Columbian Amazon region for 30something years. Without leaning solely on novelty value or simplistic exoticism, Embrace tells two stories. One, set in the early 20th century, is of Theodor Koch-Grunberg (Bivjoet), a real German ethnologist/explorer; at the story’s outset, he’s gravely ill and needs the help of solitary warrior Karamakate (Nilbio Torres) to find a rare plant that can cure him. Another story, some 40 or 50 years later, finds older Karamakate (Antonio Bolívar) guiding Richard Evans Schultes (Brionne Davis), another […]...
- 2/16/2016
- by Vadim Rizov
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Inspired by Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes, the first explorers of the Colombian Amazon, Embrace of the Serpent is a spiritual quest with a political regret. We follow two stories of German explorers (one of them is Jan Bijvoet of Borgman) meeting with an Amazonian shaman and searching for a healing plant. Director Ciro Guerra's third feature bears witness to the consequences of the European invasion that changed and destroyed culture and landscape of this stunning area of the world forever. But even more, it is a search for something beyond reach, something cosmic, maybe something that is not supposed to die. Like so many films it follows a clash between cultures, juxtapositions which always have to deal with otherness and in this case...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 2/16/2016
- Screen Anarchy
The entire Academy Awards endeavour seems to expand every year, as more and more often, shortlists are announced during the behind-the-scenes nominations process, ahead of the final nominations announcement. While that tends to make the awards season feel even longer, it does much to raise the profile of films that might otherwise be little noticed by general audiences – including those submitted to the Academy for consideration as Best Foreign Film.
The Academy accepts one submission from each country, and the deadline for those submissions was October 1st this year. The selection process then has two phases. In the first phase, the Foreign Language Film Award Committee screens each submission, and selects six for shortlisting, with an additional three selected by the Foreign Language Film Award Executive Committee. This set of nine films is then announced as the shortlist, and this is the announcement we have seen today.
The shortlisted films...
The Academy accepts one submission from each country, and the deadline for those submissions was October 1st this year. The selection process then has two phases. In the first phase, the Foreign Language Film Award Committee screens each submission, and selects six for shortlisting, with an additional three selected by the Foreign Language Film Award Executive Committee. This set of nine films is then announced as the shortlist, and this is the announcement we have seen today.
The shortlisted films...
- 12/22/2015
- by Sarah Myles
- We Got This Covered
We often hear people remark about how they’ve got a tune or melody “stuck in their head”. The same thing could be said for certain…magical…memorable films. An image or a sequence can stay in your brain for a long, long while. Embrace Of The Serpent is one such cinematic experience. It’s based on a true story. Oh wait, it’s based on two true stories, linked together by one remarkable man and, perhaps, the most famous, celebrated river in the world, the Amazon. And the man is Karamakate, the last shaman of his jungle tribe. We first meet him in 1940, deep into his sixties as played by Antonio Bolivar, when he encounters a man foreign to his home, an American scientist Richard Evans Schultes (Brionne Davis), who is in search of the healing plant, the yakruna. He had read about it in the diary of another scientist,...
- 11/5/2015
- by Jim Batts
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
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