Embrace of the Serpent
I don't think I've been as excited to see a movie in recent memory as I am to see Embrace of the Serpent. Last week, NPR featured an interview with director Ciro Guerra. The host opens the segment by saying, "To understand the Amazon, director Ciro Guerra says you have to lose your mind."
The film was inspired by two diaries, of a German and an American who traveled to the Amazon decades apart, but were imagined by the indigenous peoples of the Amazon "as the same person, a single soul traversing across several lives. They also see time as something that doesn't proceed inexorably into the future. In one scene, the elderly Karamakate (a shaman) gazes across the river into the past, where the German explorer from decades before staggers to the opposite bank."
The story is told from the point of view of Karamakate, as a young and old man, as he guides the German explorer suffering from an unknown disease in which he cannot dream in search of a mysterious plant.
If you've seen the movie, leave a comment!
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