My choice for best foreign film of the year is EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT> It is like no ohter film you will see today. Looking and feeling like an exceptional documentary, this based on a real incredible true story is in fact a narrative film. Years in the making and cast with authentic people as well as subre actors it is playing in at the FILM FORUM in NYC .. it must close on the 31st . If you see one film this Easter weekend ...make it Embrace of the Serpent.
Set in the Colombian Amazon, EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT has been called visually “mesmerizing” and “stunning,” as it tells the story of two Western explorers who search for rare botanical species in this most remote and lush of South American jungles. Based on the diaries of two white men who travelled in the region, one in 1909, and the other 30 years later – the film, nonetheless, has as its protagonist a native shaman who, first as a young man and then as a much older one, acts as their guide. Karamakate is no naïf. He’s tough-minded and astute about the ravages brought by the white man’s colonialism, his missionaries and rapacious rubber industry. Under the spell of their guide, the explorers unwittingly become entranced by a sense of time that is more circular than linear and experience spectacular hallucinogenic dreams and desires.
