The Oscars
The deepest conquest in “Embrace of the Serpent”
By Jenny A.
Photo: Courtesy
The ravages of colonialism cast a dark shadow over the South American landscapeest in Embrace of the Serpent, the first film shot in the Amazonian rainforest in over 30 years. Filmed in stunning black-and-white, the film centers on Karamakate (portrayed in various stages by Nilbio Torres and Antonio Bolívar Salvado), an Amazonian shaman and the last survivor of his people, and the two scientists (Evans and Theo, portrayed by Brionne Davis and Jan Bijvoet) who, over the course of 40 years, build a friendship with him. The film was inspired by the real-life journals of two explorers (Theodor Kock-Grünberg and Richard Evans Schultes) who traveled through the Colombian Amazon during the last century in search of the sacred and difficult-to-find psychedelic Yakruna plant.
Embrace of the Serpent from director Ciro Guerra who reflects a poetic film and It’s a tense, trippy, emotional and full of adventures and if you go into it just looking for metaphors and symbolism about colonialism and indigenous culture, you will find those things. During 2 hr. 3 min.you will see the real redemption of the white colonials with the best images of the jungle even are in black and white.
