Noble Torres as young Karamakate
“EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT” My rating: B (Opens March 11 at the Tivoli)
125 minutes | No MPAA rating
Mixing elements as diverse as “Apocalypse Now,” “Aguirre, Wrath of God” and the hallucinogenic “El Topo,” the Columbian-lensed “Embrace of the Serpent” is less a conventional narrative than a sort of head trip that audiences are invited to inhabit for two hours.
Shot in ravishing widescreen black and white and propelled by a natural soundtrack so intense you feel you’re stranded in a South American jungle, Ciro Guerra’s films tells the story of two river journeys 40 years apart.
In the years before World War I Theo (Jan Bijvoet), a German scientist and explorer, shows up in the jungle camp of Karamakate (Nilbio Torres), an astonishingly handsome young shaman who has lived most to this life in solitude. Theo is dying of a jungle fever and Karamakate, who claims that he is the last surviving member of his tribe, agrees to paddle this white man upstream to the land of his childhood, where there exists a flower whose curative powers are Theo’s only hope for survival.
That journey alternates with another river journey taking place four decades later. This time Karamakate, now an old man (and portrayed by Antonio Bolivar) accompanies an American scientist (Brionne Davis) in retracing that journey. They are searching for that same medicinal plant, although the American’s motives may be more mercenary than scientific.
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