In the depths of the Amazon rainforest, far from the so-called civilization, there is a different understanding of time. 40 years there have a heartbeat of human history. therefore The Colombian director Ciro Guerra also reaches a succinct interface to bridge The shaman and the serpent 40 years in his third, transcended by magic and hallucinogenic black and white images movie. Link between the times is the hermit Karamakate who thinks he is the last survivor of Cohiuano strain when young Manduca Indio tracking him in 1909, accompanied by the German anthropologist Theodor von Martius in the jungle.
Lonely Shaman is the researcher who is seriously ill, heal, but Karamakate curses the “white demon” of all Europeans death over the tribes of the Amazon has brought. Reluctantly he helps the intruder – in the hope that in a remote region of the rainforest yet to find an enclave survivor of his tribe. Together, the men embark in a canoe on the search for the mythical Yakruna plant that could save lives Theos.
The young Karamakate (Nilbio Torres) is one of the most impressive figures, which has produced the world cinema of recent times. The muscular giant with a considerable body tension and penetrating eyes does not correspond to the racist topos of the “noble savage”. He had to watch as the white colonial raped his habitat for the purpose of rubber extraction regardless of the harmony between man and nature and destroyed. He then retreated into the jungle to defend his country against the invaders.
The former plantation slave Manduca is a victim of cruel colonial history of Colombia, but Karamakate sees in him only a Caboclo: a bastard who wears clothes of whites. The boy acts as an intermediary between the researcher and their leader, but an agreement is hardly possible in spite of good intentions of anthropologists. As compared to a tribal leader Theo insists on the return of a stolen compass, because the indigenous people would lose by technical aids its traditional navigation skills Karamakate accuses him of patronizing. “The knowledge is not yours alone!”
The Odyssey of Karamakate, Manduca and Theo, the film reflects in a second encounter 40 years on: the late 1940s the American Ethnobotanist Evan Theos following records to the fabled Yakruna plant locate to make, he meets Karamakate. The two storylines based loosely on the respective travel reports the anthropologist Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes. The time interval illustrates the trail of destruction left by the Amazon and its inhabitants the white colonial rule. Looked at the old Karamakate his drawings on the rocks, without remembering their meaning. His knowledge of the past and the traditions of his people now extinct are lost forever.
again a white man comes in the jungle as, Karamakate for him initially only derision , “These are the first sensible words I hear from the mouth of a white man,” he replied Evan when he tells him that he had dedicated his life to the study of plant life. Karamakate itself has lost touch with nature and he must even preparing Mambe, a paste of coca leaves, can show from the Americans. The destruction of his people has Karamakate to a Chullachaqui , an empty shell, reduced – as well as his photo in Theos Reisetagebuch only a schemes of proud shaman reproduces, he once was. For the Indio is the search for the medicinal plant may be the last chance to get in touch with his past again
the epic cinemascope images of cinematographer David Gallego illustrate this process of awareness, merging with the cycles of nature. The shaman and the serpent enters its still images not only fluent in between the stories of Theo and Evan, but again and again between contemplative shots and impressionistic close-ups, the contours of which dissolve in the gray nuances of the jungle.
The film but is also in an immediate sense of an expansion of consciousness: There are more psychedelic substances consumed than in the Acid-films of the Chilean Psychomagikers Alejandro Jodorowsky. At the same time psychedelia Guerra has a political dimension. The director refers to a basic text colonial literature, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness , and its most famous adaptation Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola. The images that Guerra snatches the colonized unconscious, provide good material for nightmares.
Andreas Busche
has already in 2002 with the Goethe-Institut organized the German Film Festival in San Francisco and restored for the Dutch Filmmuseum old movies. He writes for the taz , the Friday , the Rolling Stone and concrete , the term “film journalist “he will still try to avoid
in two time levels, travelers are witness to the inhuman excesses of the colonial regime: Karamakate, Manduca and Theo seen in a Spanish convent, as the freed plantation children is driven by the power of the whip their “diabolical” language. And 40 years on the men fall into a delusional nightmare scenario, in which a slightly ajar to Marlon Brando’s Major Kurtz colonizer presents himself as Jesus revenant and the itinerary of the crucified Indios lined.
In The shaman and the serpent is the perspective of the original colonial text runs: In Guerra is about the colonial experience of the Indians; the white travelers are merely extras. They may on indigenous knowledge to participate and experience so after all – in a nice throwback to the finals of Kubrick 2001 – their spiritual transformation. This complex situation of genre motifs, colonial criticism and subaltern, magical secret knowledge is The shaman and the serpent – in cooperation with the Philippine guerrilla filmmaker Lav Diaz – in the post-colonial tradition of the Third cinema of the sixties. Its aesthetic radicalism remains under the conditions of a globalized arthouse market today unmatched. The hallucinogenic effect of Guerra’s images is still unique.
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