agmtw logo
search
Embrace of the Serpent (2015)

Embrace of the Serpent (2015)

The Very Best

8.7

Movie

Argentina, Colombia
Aboriginal, Catalan, German
Adventure, Drama
2015
CIRO GUERRA
Antonio Bolivar, Brionne Davis, Jan Bijvoet
125 min

What it's about

The epic story of the first contact, encounter, approach, betrayal and, eventually, life-transcending friendship, between Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman, last survivor of his people, and two scientists that, over the course of 40 years, travel through the Amazon in search of a sacred plant that can heal them. Inspired by the journals of the first explorers of the Colombian Amazon, Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes.

The take

This movie is gentle and utterly chaotic, intimate and massive, beautiful and ugly... it tries to be so many things and somehow pulls it off. It tells two stories parallel in time, based on the real-life diaries of two European scientists who traveled through the Amazon in the early and mid-twentieth century. Their stories are some of the only of accounts of Amazonian tribes in written history. The main character and guide in the movie is a shaman who met them both. At times delicate to the point of almost being able to feel the water, at times utterly apocalyptic and grand... to watch this movie is to take a journey through belief systems, through film... and to be brought along by cinematography that is at times unbelievably and absurdly beautiful. Meditative, violent, jarring, peaceful, luminous, ambitious, artful, heavy handed, graceful... it's really an incredible film.

Comments

Add a comment

Your name

Your comment

UP NEXT 

UP NEXT 

UP NEXT 

The Guilty (2018)

A minimalist, razor-sharp thriller that will have you gasping for air.

9.0

The Substance (2024)

Demi Moore swaps bodies in this standout chaotic body dysmorphia horror

8.0

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020)

A star-studded and riveting legal drama with a blockbuster feel.

8.1

System Crasher (2019)

A tale of trauma and one of the most talked about movies on Netflix in 2020.

9.0

Forgotten Love (2023)

The stunning third take of the classic Polish pre-war melodrama

7.7

His Three Daughters (2024)

Three sisters deal with life and death in this moving family portrait

8.9

Hail Satan? (2019)

Forget everything you think you know about the Satanic Temple

8.0

I Lost My Body (2019)

The Oscar-nominated unconventional animation

8.2

Incendies (2011)

Part melodrama, part war thriller, Incendies is gorgeous and heartbreaking from the first scene

9.9

Wind River (2017)

Sicario's screenwriter directs this story of murder in an Indigenous reserve

9.4

Curated by humans, not algorithms.

agmtw logo

© 2024 agoodmovietowatch, all rights reserved.