+ Best Psychedelic Movie of the Year
+ Best Colombian Movie of the Year
+ Best B/W Movie of the Year
+ Best Poster of the Year
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| An ethereal poster for Ciro Guerra's Embrace of the Serpent |
Embrace of the Serpent is the third film from Columbian master co-writer-director Ciro Guerra (The Wind Journeys/Los Viajes del Viento (2009)), written with Jacques Toulemonde Vidal (Anna (2015)) and based on the travel journals of ethnologist Theodor Koch-Grunberg and biologist Richard Evans Schultes.
A sick German ethnologist arrives with his native guide to an Indian hermit in the Amazon in 1909 in search of a storied plant. 31 years later, an American biologist returns in search of the answers that were not supplied by the earlier expedition.
Embrace of the Serpent is a film that defies words. And yet here I go, trying to write some words to explain a bit about it. From the first to last frame, it is a film that commands your attention and sucks you in as an audience member. It takes us on a powerful, immersive, meditative journey to one of the harshest and most fascinating regions on the planet: the Amazon jungle.
The film transcends the despairing stories of peoples, plants and animals going extinct due to human stupidity and evil, - which, however, also get related forcefully, - and interacts with keen intelligence and depth with themes such as knowledge, the cosmos, humans, nature and religion on a more universal level.
There are few films that compare to Embrace of the Serpent. It immediately joins an exclusive club of jungle adventure/human meditations such as Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece Apocalypse Now (1979). Serpent is more in line with the indigenous peoples' culture, losses and point of view than those films, however, and also bring to mind Jim Jarmusch's masterpiece Dead Man (1995). Guerro amazes again and again with evocative scenes, sparse scoring and elegant B/W photography (by David Gallego (Violencia (2015))) that give the story an eternal, timeless feel, and the film is on no accounts lagging behind any of the previously mentioned, grand films.
Awesome is also the acting in Serpent: Belgian Jan Bijvoet (Borgman (2013)) as Theo and Brionne Davis (Avenged (2013)) as Evans, a rational scientist fraught with a deep, recognizable wish to outcast his knowledge and Western luggage in lieu of newfound wisdom, are phenomenal. As are debuting Nilbio Torres and Antonio Bolivar, who play Karamate at the two points in his life with extraordinary integrity and feeling, and Yauenkü Migue as the loyal, smart and good-hearted guide Manduca.
There's a true must-see film out there right now, and if you have any kind of a chance to see it in a cinema, you'd better grab it and fast. That film is Embrace of the Serpent.
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Cost: Estimated 1.4 mil. $
Box office: 2.9 mil. $ and counting
= Too early to say (but as of yet a flop)
[Embrace of the Serpent premiered May 15 (Cannes) and runs 125 minutes. Filming took place in the Columbian part of the Amazon for around 8 weeks. The film won the Art Cinema Award in the Directors' Fortnight section in Cannes. The film opened #49 with a 50k $ first weekend in 3 theaters in North America, where it peaked in 93 theaters and has grossed 1.3 mil. $ (44.8 % of the total gross to date). The film's 2nd and 3rd biggest markets are Columbia with 1.2 mil. $ (41.4 %) and Argentina with 121k $ (4.2 %). It was nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, the first Columbian film ever to achieve that honor, but lost to Son of Saul. It was also nominated for the Best International Film Independent Spirit award and a host of other awards, many of which it has won. Embrace of the Serpent is certified fresh at 99 % with a 8.4 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Embrace of the Serpent?
