Solidrariol
Am I Missing Something?
Merolliv
I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.
Kinley
This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
Red-Barracuda
Set in the early to mid-twentieth century in the Colombian Amazon, a shaman, who is the lone survivor of his tribe after it has been wiped out by the white man, guides two explorers on expeditions, forty years apart. Both white scientists seek a sacred plant with healing powers, both for different reasons.I first have to say that I saw this film with English subtitles that were, shall we say, a little uneven. I should have known I was in for an interesting ride when the English translation of the movie title came up as 'Hug a Snake'! So, I am pretty sure that several things must have been lost in such a translation. This is certainly a contemplative look at the effects of colonialism on the indigenous South American people of the Amazon. It does so it an admittedly very subtle manner, although we do see some of the effects that the rubber plantations and the spread of Catholicism had on the people of the area.If I'm being totally honest I did not fully connect with this film and I'm not sure it's all to do with the ropey English translation in the version I watched. I think it was more that its ideas of the spirit world and nature just didn't interest me very much. It is nevertheless quite obviously an impressive production on some ways though. The authentic use of indigenous dialect was something to be commended, while the black and white cinematography was good. Ultimately, the content wasn't really my cup of tea but I can still see some value in it.
beardondillon-64378
Embrace Of The Serpent is a film about an amazonian shaman played by Nilbio Torres and two scientist looking for a plant that could supposedly heal people and they have to work with the shaman to try and find it.lets get this out of the way first, this movie is so gorgeously shot, there is this one tracking shot that transitions the two scientist together and it stunning. it was also so well acted, i actually did not see actors, i saw real men talking to each other and real men arguing and i forgot i was watching a movie, the best performance in this film was the older shaman played excellently by Antonio Bolivar.this movie has a non linear story line and i got so involved with these characters and the world they are in witch made this film perfect for me.A+
KissEnglishPasto
......................................................from Pasto,Colombia...Via: L.A. CA., CALI, COLOMBIA and ORLANDO, FL It isn't much of a leap to venture that the vast majority of IMDb Users have never seen a Colombian Film. If there is a single word in the above Title that grabs you, rest assured, you must "EMBRACE" this Oscar-nominated gem by placing it at the top of your "Must See" List! Colombian Director Ciro Guerra (Los Viajes del Viento/read my Review) has taken an Amazonian Shaman's reality-based Dream and crafted it into a visionary cinematic hallucination for the ages! The operative term here is "Culture-Clash". Two delicately intertwined story lines, both inspired by travel journals authored three decades apart by two Amazonian explorers; German scientist Theodor Koch-Grunberg (Jan Bijvoet, "Borgman"), in 1909, and by American amateur botanist Richard Evans Schultes (Brionne Davis, "Avenged"), thirty years later. EMBRACE opens a gritty and convincingly realistic window into the Colombian Amazon Region of the early 20th Century. Guerra gets up close and personal with some of the persistent cultural atrocities perpetrated on indigenous peoples in the Amazon region of Colombia, without dwelling inordinately on them. As if the three plus centuries of Spanish Colonial Rule had not provided enough genocide and torture!For those of you addicted to "Fast and Furious" pacing in movies, undoubtedly, will find EMBRACE a bit "Tedious and Slow", but I would say, "Deliberate and True to Life". One can, at best, barely imagine the laid- back life rhythms in remote regions of the Amazon a century ago! The intentional ever-so-slightly grainy Black & White cinematography imbues EMBRACE with an authentic 1930's look and feel. Of course, there have been numerous critiques of thusly having deprived us of the myriad of Amazon shades of green…But EMBRACE is not a Travel Promo and I applaud Ciro Guerra's Black & White decision! Here is a comment/comparison you probably might not see anywhere else: Although Director Ciro Guerra was born in 1981, I can't help but think that, as a kid, he saw and was influenced by Stanley Kubrick's 1968, "2001" (My Favorite Movie)! There were, in my opinion, a number of interesting parallels, confirmation of which I will leave up to you! Shaman Karamakate, the last survivor of his tribe (Nibio Torres-young/Antonio Bolivar-old) who has been chewed up and spit out as a lifelong victim of culture clash, and, as a result, defines himself as "chullachaqui", a walking empty shell zombie of a man.EMBRACE is light years from being a feel-good movie, yet, there is a "spirituality and focus which can help you transcend even a worst- case scenario of mistreatment and misfortune in life", that is transformational and which provides ground swelling inspiration! This unique film would probably appeal to those who crave unusual true stories, those of you who enjoy Drama focused on a Clash of Cultures, and movies set in exotic locations! 10*.....ENJOY/DISFRUTELA!
deacon_blues-3
This film allows all you bleeding hearts out there to spend some quality time wallowing in that most selfish of emotions: guilt. Guilt about all the pristine native cultures your forbears annihilated from existence. Not that your guilt will bring any of them back, but at least you can feel good about yourself. After all, you're clearly more enlightened than your benighted ancestors, who thought their own culture was the only one that mattered. You even get to deceive yourself into thinking that you can actually experience and become a member of one of their mystical, ecologically friendly tribes, appreciate their sacred mysteries, and admit how insensitive, ignorant, and cruel your forefathers were! Such a deal! For my own part, I have better things to do; so I regret the wasted time this film tricked me into sacrificing for the sake of it's indulgent, hypocritical, pointless nonsense. But don't you find it ironic and contradictory that when Martius does not want to leave behind a compass with the tribe because it will change the way they navigate the Amazon and cause them to lose part of their cultural identity, Karamakate rebukes him because "knowledge belongs to all men, not just to you whites!" But then later, Karamakate refuses to allow the yakruna blossom to be shared with white culture on the grounds that it is sacred. What happened to knowledge belonging to all men? What is sacred to the whites is exactly the thing they bring with them to share with all native cultures, and that is what these filmmakers resent most!Then we have the "noble" Karamakate ridiculing the white researchers about thinking that "things" are so important and insisting on dumping their belongings into the river so that these poor benighted fools can "find themselves." But his observation is an ignorant one, blind to the simple fact that some cultures had to learn to survive in environments and climates where you can't just walk around naked 24/7/365 and get all your food from whatever happens to be currently hanging off the nearby trees or wandering onto your path.This movie is beautifully filmed in black and white, reserving the color sequences for the caapi hallucinations late in the story. But it is full of muddleheaded thinking about guilt, regret, and nostalgia for lost native cultures it will never know or understand. But if the setting of the story is so life-changingly beautiful, why not let us appreciate it the way God created it: in color?South American native cultures are not the first ones to be lost by being supplanted by superseding, technologically superior ones. If you study history, it is merely the way things work. You would think that people who believe in natural selection would understand that advantageous, technologically adept cultures will always tend to supplant and make obsolete primitive ones that offer few advantages.The whole endeavor just nauseatingly pointless anthropological hand-wringing and conscience-soothing.Get over it, already! And appreciate your own culture for it's irresistible, superseding superiority!
