Embrace of the Serpent (2016)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Captivating movie !

Absolutely Fantastic

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

In a year that has been rather bleak for grown ups Embrace of the Serpent stands out like a bright light. Intelligent, fascinating, anthropological...if it was a book it would be a real page turner. I loved everything about this film from the powerful presence of Nilbio Torres' & Antonio Boliva as the admirable and wise Karamakate to the critique of Western culture with its twisted, arrogant & so often brutal religion along with its insatiable misappropriation of other's wealth and culture for mere pieces of silver and the patient and sentient willingness of the central figure (deemed savage of course by European eyes) to bring life and understanding to the very German Theo, so stiff and attached to all the wrong things in life. It's beautifully filmed and there is not a single moment of tedium or narrowness as the story unfolds over several decades. Wonderful treat and it lingers long in the imagination after the film has ended. Frankly it's inspirational.

(Flash Review)Not just relating to the Amazon River but the introspection of depth that the man seeking a rare healing plant must dive into in order to find it. That is the core story line but there is much more to it and open to one's personal perspectives. The film is shot in rich black and white and has two timelines. Two white men, 40 years apart or so locate the same native who knows where to find the plant. So you get the see the native as a young buck and a wise old man. The two timelines allow the viewer to see the effect of some modern cultures that have slipped into their primitive world over time. Yet another story nugget is more spiritual. Both searches (old and new) are on long journeys through the jungle and as they search the native encourages the white man to help locate the plant by looking into his soul and feel for it and ask the jungle for help. Pretty interesting film with great cinematography, authentic cultural scenes and some very surreal moments yet some may find the pace a bit sluggish.

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!

! Great movie, with very good performances,beautiful scenery, very well done!Without being an expert or a bold critic connoisseur film world and beyond being a simple,moviegoer common, I consider my humble opinion,the film is overrated, the use of white and black played down majesty to such loftylandscapes and still believing that he lacked "something" to the movie,I can say that it is very interesting to show vestiges of our ancient history, giving lessons to our Current and Modern society ...