Unique, a Near Masterpiece

The first image we see in Ciro Guerra’s spellbinding film, “Embrace of the Serpent,” is a human animal — Karamakate, played with stunning conviction by nonprofessional, 30-year-old actor Nibio Torres. Graceful and muscular, Karamakate is a shaman watching over his native habitat; but there is nothing romantic about him. He knows man is only a part of a nature he can destroy but never control.

“Serpent,” which was nominated for best foreign language film at last Sunday’s Academy Awards, is perhaps the finest film ever made about the Amazon, that haunting and dangerous river and 1.4 billion-acre rainforest that has piqued the imagination of writers and filmmakers for decades. But Guerra turns the usual Amazon story on its head: instead of a Westerner as protagonist, he focuses on the indigenous Karamakate.

The movie was inspired by the diaries of two Western explorers who, 40 years apart,  searched for the mystical yakruna plant. As depicted in the film, both men are ill in their own way: German ethnologist Theodor Koch-Grunberg in the early 20th century is physically sick; decades later American biologist Richard Evans Schultes is metaphysically ill, having never once dreamed in his sleep. Both believe the plant will cure them.

Guerra films in a wonderfully pearlescent black and white that glows like the inside of an oyster shell. This sets the movie firmly in the past, like an old issue of National Geographic come to life. As it jumps back and forth in time between the two quests, Karamakate is the fulcrum. (He is played as an old man by Antonio Bolivar Salvador, who really is one of the last of his people, the Ocaina.) And he condescends to his white companions as much as they do to him.

Guerra keeps his dialogue spare. The soundtrack is filled with rushing water and insect noises. His three main characters have penetrating minds but different world views. A scene of a Christian mission gone to seed is as terrifying as any in “Apocalypse Now.” This is the heart of cultural corruption and darkness.

Eventually reality becomes slippery, the movie dreamlike. Mysteries pile up, along with surprises and shocks. Finally the frames seem unable to contain the story — the dream — any longer, and the film bursts into unworldly color. It is a dream you won’t want to end.

“Embrace of the Serpent,” in Spanish, Portuguese, German and Amazonian languages with subtitles, is playing locally. If you cannot see the film in a theater, it is a fine one to stream when it becomes available. This is a near masterpiece.