Explore the Amazon Rainforest of 1909
By Skip Sheffield
Imagine yourself in the deepest, darkest part of the Amazon rainforest
in what is now Colombia, way back in 1909, when the area was uncharted and
unexplored.
That’s what Austrian scientist and explorer Theodor
Koch-Grunberg and his colleague Richard Evans Schultes experienced more than 100 years
ago. Their perilous expedition is memorialized in “Embrace of the Serpent,”
which was Colombia’s official entry for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film.
The film won eight Macondo Awards, which is Colombia’s equivalent of the Oscar.
“Embrace of the Serpent” is the first film shot in the Amazonian
rainforest in more than 30 years. Director Ciro Guerra chose to shoot in
radiant black-and-white, which lends a vintage look to the movie. The script is based
on the diaries of Theodor Koch-Grunberg, who is called Theo and is played by
Jan Bijvoet.
Theo is very weak and near death as the movie begins. His
only hope is to find the sacred and extremely rare healing plant Called Yakruna
by the natives. Theo begs Karamakate, the last surviving tribal shaman, to take
him to the remote mountain where the last Yakruna grows.
Karamakate is played by Nilbo Torres as the young native who
befriends Theo and Antonio Bolivar as an old man.
It was loyal Karamakate who preserved Theo’s diaries and saw
to it they got back to Austria, where they could be published.
There is an undercurrent message of the devastating effects
of European colonial rule over the native inhabitants and their unspoiled
paradise. This is made even more poignant today, as South American rainforests
are despoiled and destroyed every day in the name of development and profit.
What Ciro Guerra has created is an artistic masterpiece with a heartbreaking,
heartfelt ecological message.
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