El abrazo de la serpiente (Embrace of the Serpent)

Serpentine seductions, recoiled recollections, imposed civilization, the Amazon, stratus immemorial.

A German ethnologist (Jan Bijvoet as as Theodor Koch-Grunberg) falls ill in the jungle and only one man knows the plant that can cure him.

He's reluctant to help however due to the ways in which Europeans have invaded and ravaged his lands.

Indigenous knowledge, they hadn't created firearms or printing presses, but their wisest knew everything about the land, the creatures and plants and seasonal harmonies, symbiotic symmetries, psychoencyclopedic utility, what to use and what not to use, how to co-exist for millennia, neither stewards nor supplicants, living with nature as one.

From their point of view, European culture may have resembled a serpent, a massive anaconda, sanctimoniously suffocating their people, with intent monstrous gluttony.

From that of the European, the serpent may have been symbolized by the Amazon river itself, terrifyingly labyrinthine, spiritual yet unaware of the Christian God.

These inadequate reflections haunt Theodor and Karamakate's (Nilbio Torres and Antonio Bolivar) hostile interactions as a Christianized Indigenous person (Yauenkü Migue as Manduca) mediates, fully aware of rubber plantation horrors, with the scars on his back to prove it.

There's a powerful scene where a crippled Indigenous rubber labourer begs to die after he's discovered alone by them, their dialogue affecting divergent moralities, as acculturation marches on.

The three travel through the jungle in search of a sacred plant (yakruna) and Karamakate's lost people whom he thought were dead, encountering the destructive path of progress along the way.

Old and new worlds clash as they struggle to forge an understanding, another plot following their path decades later, as a young admirer of Koch-Grunberg's work enlists Karamakate's aid to find yakruna after having read Theodor's diaries.

Throughout this plot thread, Karamakate worries that he's become a chullachaqui, an empty shell, a void, as his memories slowly start to return.

El abrazo de la serpiente (Embrace of the Serpent) values environmental wisdom, culture, immersion, gradually heightening colonialist tensions, as they move closer and closer toward medicinal convalescence.

Progress itself is Ciro Guerra's unwilling target, as the dark side of rapid commercial expansion clashes with the remnants of holistic worlds.

A cautious pace lures you into the narrative and lets its unveilings speak for themselves, while mesmerizingly intuiting dreamlike fascination and cultivated dread, a wild consciousness, harnessed, revitalized, exclaimed.

What a world it must have been.

The moon and the sun coaxed interactive eternity.

Blessed embowered succulence.

Transcendent joyful sorrow.

Mr. Holmes

Reflections on lives lived and current pastimes, a tripartite treatise, excavated thoughts on loneliness, the life of the mind, a life of service, three families torn by grief, Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen), sleuth, benefactor, cause, troubled later in life by hindsight's haze, fortuitous fog cutting, carving out a literary track.

Conducive.

One mother longs for her lost children, another takes care of her son, one son lost his father to empire, families surreally strung.

Bees with their honey, organized, assiduous, living a life of harmony and order, perniciously plagued par les guêpes.

With the aid of his housekeeper's (Laura Linney as Mrs. Munro) clever son Roger (Milo Parker),
Sherlock tends his hives while painfully looking back.

Has he done his best to promote unity?

Or functioned as unwitting predator?

Apicultural endeavours, interrogating the solitary life.

Mr. Holmes couldn't be more different than Guy Ritchie's films.

Or any other manifestation of the iconic detective I've seen.

A pasteurized yet potent clarification of the facts, Sherlock's existential longing, a search for wisdom's tranquility.

For rest.

For satisfaction.

He seems to embrace related impossibilities in the end, while finding what joy he can in thoughts prone to melancholia.

Sherlock the retired country gentleperson.

Taking care of a family.

Keeping his bees.

L'homme qui rit

A child is grossly deformed and abandoned.

Chance intervenes, providing shelter, friendship and nourishment.

The passage of congenial times nurtures love and success, swathed within an impoverished yet self-sufficient itinerant tenacity, innocent yet cunning, diligent and stable.

Until historical alignments introduce an aristocratic heritage whose peers and privileges threaten his sense of balance.

But these very same entitlements present means, pretentious and vitriolic though they may be, through which that sense's desire for social justice can institute positive change, in pre-revolutionary France.

L'homme qui rit is more of a kid's film, filled with obvious larger-than-life stereotypical depictions situated within a maudlin yet tear-jerking realistic fairy tale, but it does function as a contemporary allegory for democratic citizens who lack wealth but still wish to use their (available) political channels to influence current affairs, such as the environmental footprint of big business.

It's difficult.

It's daunting.

And seemingly impossible.

Unless you take into consideration the work of organizations like Avaaz and/or what's currently taking place in highly industrialized nations like Germany, whose decision to replace all of its nuclear reactors with environmentally sustainable technologies should be applauded.

It can be done.

It's being done.

Canada can do similar things.

If it's intent on moving forward.