ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Best Foreign Language Film submission

Embrace of the Serpent – Clash of Realities

Oscar-nominated (Best Foreign Language Film) Embrace of the Serpent is an artful exploration of the spirituality of natural religion. It is the story of Karamakata, a shaman, and two journeys he undertakes many years apart with European ethnologists. The story is inspired by the journals of two such scientists, Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes, who traveled through the Amazon in the last century. Because director Ciro Guerra wanted to make a film about colonialism from the perspective of native peoples, it veers away from the Western way of storytelling. It is still essentially a linear narrative, but it also manages to conflate the two stories from years apart into parallel accounts.

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The first story shows us Karamakata as a young man. Theo, a German scientist, is brought to Karamakata for healing. He has contracted one of the tropical diseases, but it can only be cured by the rare (perhaps mythical) plant Yakruna. Karamakata, the last of his people, knows where the plant can be found and sets off in search of the healing flower. Years later, Evan, an American ethnologist, finds a now old Karamakata in search of knowledge about the fate of Theo, who was never heard from again after the earlier trip. Again Karamakata sets off?across the same route?with another Westerner in tow. The visits with some of the same tribes or outposts show us the corruption the Western ideas have brought to the area.

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Because the film is such a visual experience and less a strict narrative, it has a bit of a poetic feel to it. This is enhanced by the use of black and white cinematography which takes the film out of the realm of ?reality?. (At first I was a bit disappointed that I was missing the vibrant colors of the rainforest, but soon I began to appreciate the way the photography enhance the mystical feel of the film.) The conflict between the Western scientific understanding of reality and the native natural view of reality is a central part of this film. Theo, and later Evan, hold on to their Western ideas, but they must rely on Kanamakata for their survival. Karamakata?s approach to the world around him is very different from the way the European travelers see the world. Whose understanding is correct? Or is the very concept of ?reality? something that can vary?

This conflict about reality is essentially a spiritual and metaphysical question. Even within Western thought there often arise conflicts between science and religion?even between different scientific views and different religious views. This journey through Amazonia and across time takes a much more spiritual perspective than it does a scientific view. Karamakata?s natural religious understanding of the world may seem very strange to those of us with a Western mindset, but then it could well be just as legitimate an understanding?and is one that is shared by many people throughout the world. Is there something more spiritual about such a non-scientific worldview? How do you align the spiritual ways of seeing reality with the scientific view that is so engrained in our Western thought?

Photos by Andres Cordoba, courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories

Aferim! – When Everyone Knew Their Place

?We live as we can, not as we want.?

Aferim! is set in 1835 in the Balkans. It is a time in which the structures of society were clearly stratified. Everybody had their place?and nearly all groups looked down on other groups. For filmmaker Radu Jude, this is an attempt to better understand modern day Romanian society by bringing into focus the history that people often overlook or even try to suppress.

It is a bit of a road trip film in which a constable, Constandin, has been dispatched by the local aristocrat to find and return a runaway Gypsy slave. As Constandin and his son travel to various areas, they have a series of encounters with different people: Christians and Jews, Russians and Turks, Romanians and Hungarians. Each group says terrible things about those not like them. A Christian priest is by far the most prejudiced against Gypsies and also heavily anti-Semitic. Even after the slave is found and brought back, we see the strictures of society continuing to play out in very unjust ways. Jude portrays all these various prejudices with humor through overstating them, but it is clear he expects his viewers to see and hear what is still being said more subtly today.

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Constandin is a man in the middle of competing worldviews. On the one hand, he has been charged with maintaining the order of society. The slave (in more than just running away) has broken that order, and Constandin must bring him back to face the consequences?despite the fact that,?when he hears the slave?s story, he knows that it will not be justice. All along the way, as he and his son encounter so many people and ideas, it shows that change is in process, but he has been tasked with obstructing any change. He is at times somewhat philosophical about it all, but only on the level of aphorisms that often contradict each other.

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While the near feudal aspects of that society may seem very different than our own past, it should be noted that, in the United States at that time, slavery was still in force. The Antebellum South was in some ways just as rigidly stratified as the culture we see in Aferim! And just as Jude looks back at where his society was nearly two centuries ago to get insight into where they are as a people today, we also sometimes look back at Western or Civil War epics to reflect beliefs and situations that continue on our time. It is important to understand that many of the issues that exist today are the results of ideas and actions from many years ago that continue to influence us for good or ill. It is only by such recognition that we can begin to bring the kinds of change that may be required to make a better world.

Photos courtesy Big World Pictures