Jungle movies tend to fall into two categories. Most of them are about the white man taming savages a la Tarzan, and a minority go to the other extreme and present jungle natives as idyllic peoples who are the only ones truly in touch with the Earth. This movie falls into that minority. An early 20th century German travels to the Amazon to discover a rare healing plant, and a German botanist follows in his footsteps 40 years later. More drama is added by the severe illness of the first explorer, who is dying and needs that plant to survive. The movie, by trying to avoid the “natives are savages” cliché falls into the other cliché that “natives are enlightened.” The movie’s strong point is that much of the story is from an authentic native perspective, but the film’s strength is also its weakness: the natives’ way of thinking is so foreign to our own that it makes the film sometimes hard to relate to.  And such is the film as a whole; its positives are accompanied by an equal number of negatives. “Embrace of the Serpent” provides excellent acting (especially from the main native character), an intelligent story, and very nice black-and-white cinematography. But its pace is slower than what most people can tolerate, its sensibilities are somewhat alien to ours, and there’s a blasphemous mock Christ that feels unnecessary and over-the-top. I know that weird cults like those portrayed in the movie do exist, but this crazy Christ stretches the limits of credulity and viewer tolerance. It’s as if the screenwriter was artificially trying to inject the movie with more drama and controversy. The film is inspired by two real-life travel journals by German explorers, but it’s impossible to tell what is fact and what is fiction. The movie experience would have improved if it had mentioned those real-life journals in the beginning instead of the end credits and then used the narration from the journals to point out the real-life events. As it is, with the collection of pros negated by the cons, this movie is at the lower end of watchable.

Not for Kids
Spanish and South American native languages with English sub-titles