EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT

 "Embrace of the Serpent" is one of the most astonishing films you will ever see. It could be a documentary, though it clearly isn't. It's scripted and based, we are told, on the diaries of Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes and it's acted, magnificently in the case of Nilbio Torres and Antonio Bolivar playing the same character at different stages of his life, (neither is a professional actor and this is the first time they have appeared in a film). It is also breathtakingly well photographed in black and white in the Amazon region where it is set. It's an adventure story, an ethnographic study, a film about friendship, an account of a journey and an attack on organised religion and it's a masterpiece.

It begins in the past and then moves to 'the future' as we meet its four central characters, one of whom, Karamakate, is as I've said, played by two different men and throughout its two hour running time it moves back and forth over an unspecified period of years. A seriously ill explorer, Theo, is brought upriver by his Indian friend, Manduca, to a lone shaman, Karamakate, to be healed. At first the shaman is reluctant to help him until he learns from Theo that members of his tribe are still living in the jungle and together the three embark on a river journey in search of both a healing plant and Karamakate's people. Years later another explorer, Evan, seeks out the same shaman and the journey is, in some ways, repeated.

With its jungle-river setting, its strange river-dwelling communes and its constant threat of violence it's like a pared down version of "Apocalypse Now" but without Coppola's bombastic flourishes. The director is Ciro Guerra but it never feels like it is being directed; every incident, every moment of this great film, feels like it's happening naturally as if we've slipped into the lives of these characters without having any right to be there. A phenomenal achievement, both technically and artistically, under no circumstances should this film be missed.