Spanish Film Festival: Embrace of the Serpent is spellbinding

In a biblical sense, a serpent is regarded as the creature that led Eve to temptation and thereby brought about the first act of sin. Thus, it connotes something negative or evil. In Ciro Guerra's Oscar-nominated "Embrace of the Serpent" (2015, Colombia), we gradually realize as we go through watching the film that the creature in the title actually stands for the origin of life in the universe and thus connotes something positive or good. That's how the Amazonian indigenous tribes look at life and creation - it's being at one with nature. We can say that the film is about life and nature, but that would be too broad a description. To get into the essence of the film itself, we ought to emphasize instead that it depicts how Western colonization can encroach upon the pure quality of this nature as inhabited by the tribes. 

As Karamakate (a tribal shaman and inhabitant in the Colombian Amazon) laments, the intrusion of the Western colonizers into their lives only brought about "death", both in the figurative and literal sense. But the whites (as the tribe refers to them) counter - and not without reason - that they are only introducing them to the wonders and benefits of science. In the film's case at least, this defense of science comes from a German ethnographer (Theodor Koch-Grunberg in the 1900s) and an American botanist (Richard Evans Schultes in the 1940s). Guerra and co-writer Jacques Toulmonde Vidal based the film on the diaries of the two explorers and used the narrative device of them searching for a rare herbal plant called yakruna (for Theo's illness and for Evans' research) to delve into the question of the destructive quality of colonization and of how the sublime and divine beauty of nature and the unfettered lives of the natives are threatened and vanquished in the face of "advanced" civilization. 

The result is a black-and-white cinematic piece that is stunning and surreal, poetic and majestic, thoughtful and haunting. "Embrace of the Serpent" is an absolute spellbinder that evokes Werner Herzog's oeuvre, "Apocalyse Now" and even "2001: A Space Odyssey". As Karamakate (both portrayed by Nilbio Torres (the young) and Antonio Bolivar (the old)) guides Theo (in the 1900s) and Evans (in the 1940s) through the dense forest and wild river in search of the yakruna, we become witness to all the beautiful, the mysterious and even the sinister that form part of the jungle's distinctive universe whose balance and harmony are usurped by outsiders. With the encroachment of the so-called "advanced" civilization, nothing is divined and respected. Slavery, indoctrination and pillage, cloaked under the guise of science and religion, become a common enterprise. 

There are a couple of telling illustrations in the film of how colonization can only bring more harm than good, both for the outsiders and the natives. These situations are encountered respectively by Theo and Evans as they go through their journey along with Karamakate. The first is about a Spanish Catholic priest who sets up a community of young orphan boys and indoctrinates them about the teachings of his religion, forbidding "paganism" from infiltrating this community. But whenever he finds out any of them resorting to their "old" system of beliefs (like that moving scene of Karamakate with the boys), he violently beats them, almost to the point of death. The second is regarding a Col. Kurtz-like and Christ-looking delusional man who believes that he is the Messiah and has likewise organized his own community of fanatical followers. During a night of orgiastic festivity, after his wife was healed by Karamakate, the "Messiah" asks his followers to "eat" his body in reference to the Catholic religion's rite of communion. The celebration then descends into madness. These compelling and potent interludes underline a lamentable decay within what was once a beautiful and sublime equilibrium. 

Though the colonizing "whites", as embodied by Theo and Evans, are not outrightly depicted as "villains" (in fact they do sound reasonable and amiable enough in their interaction with the natives), the film's sympathies clearly lie with the tribes. From the perspective of the outsiders, the natives' unassailable devotion to their distinct and natural way of life may appear inferior and arrested, unable and unwilling to adapt to the changes and development of "modern" civilization. But if we are to situate ourselves in their place and look deep enough, we can probably realize (or haven't we already?) that theirs is a life truly sacred as it's at one with nature, from which they believe everything in the universe springs forth and which thus must be treated with respect, in the same way that the organized religion of an "advanced" civilization accord respect to its God. As what Karamakate's wisdom suggests to us, we only have to listen to the voices of the forests, rivers, mountains, animals and all other else that's part of nature. Or else, we become a chullachaqui - a hollow spirit wandering aimlessly. 

Such wisdom is marvelously encapsulated in an early scene where Karamakate is surrounded by a swarm of white butterflies on a riverside. The image is then repeated in the film's closing moments, but this time it's Evans who is being surrounded in the mountains. If it's harmony for the shaman, it's perhaps epiphany for the explorer. 

(The shaman and the explorer journey through the Colombian Amazon in Ciro Guerra's "Embrace of the Serpent")