Movies like this?
I haven't seen the movie yet. Just looking for some really interesting and visual movies.
shareI have a website devoted to movies about Native Americans south of the U.S.:
http://www.nativeamericanfilms.org
You'll find lots of similar movies listed there. My review of Embrace of the Serpent is on the Colombia page.
The Wind Journeys, by the same writer/director, is also great, though the Native Americans only appear briefly in that one.
And there are lots of books by and about the ethnobotanist Richard Evan Schultes, the inspiration for the character Evan in the movie. He lived an incredible life.
In Herzog's films Europeans are searching myths of their own (El Dorado) or manifestations of their own culture (opera), while here foreigners are searching (rather foolishly) a "secret" of the indigenous people of America in the form of a curative plant.
Interesting paragraphs from the article "From Tarzan to Avatar", published 07/07 on The Guardian:
«The recent, Colombian-made "Embrace of the Serpent", meanwhile, viewed the whole "white man in the jungle" experience from the point of view of an indigenous shaman Karamakate, who guides two different explorers up the Amazon, 30 years apart. The film is like a reverse "Heart of Darkness". Karamakate observes his guests' materialism, their duplicity, their destructiveness and, of course, their madness, as he travels through a landscape ravaged by their interventions – not least an upriver Christian mission that's evolved into a messianic cult with a Kurtz-like leader.
«Karamakate has his own concerns – his lost tribal identity and the lack of successors on to whom he can pass his traditional knowledge. "Embrace of the Serpent" incorporates Amazonian storytelling and symbolism to hallucinogenic effect, but it's not just another jungle head-trip, it's also a defence of a culture on the verge of extinction. Its indigenous hero already knows what generations of intrepid western explorers and filmmakers failed to grasp: it's not the jungle that's alien and threatening and "other"; it’s them».