‘Embrace of the Serpent,’ an angry, poetic Oscar nominee: 3.5 stars [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

March 10, 2016 7:00 AM

‘Embrace of the Serpent,’ an angry, poetic Oscar nominee: 3.5 stars

Colombian film competed for a best foreign language film award

Worlds collide deep in the Amazon

It’s a celebration of the lost and destroyed tribes of the region

By Kenneth Turan
Los Angeles Times

Beautiful, strange, disturbing, “Embrace of the Serpent” is a film with a lot on its mind. Set in Colombia’s Amazonian jungle and a foreign language Oscar nominee, it’s simultaneously a lament, a warning and a celebration of the lost and destroyed tribes of that region, “all the people we will never know.”

Those words come from director and co-writer (with Jacques Toulemonde) Ciro Guerra, who, along with cinematographer David Gallego, has crafted a strikingly photographed black-and-white epic that intertwines a passionate attack on the depredations of invasive capitalism with a potent adventure story about not one but two trips down that river into a Conradian heart of darkness.

Separated by 40 years, each trip features a different Western scientist, one German and one American, each accompanied by the same native shaman, Karamakate (played, because of the age gap, by two actors). Both men are looking for the same thing, the sacred psychedelic Yakruna plant, but “Embrace of the Serpent” is not a film about destinations but one that involves us in journeys in the most intimate way.

The first Colombia film to feature an indigenous protagonist and the first to be shot in that country’s Amazon in more than 30 years, “Embrace” is a deep dive into another place and time as well as a different, non-Western way of experiencing reality.

More:
http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/movies-news-reviews/article64957897.html