285. Dominican film director Nelson Carlos de Los Santos Arias' fourth feature film "Pepe" (2024) built on his own original screenplay: A fascinating, multi-layered cinematic work that uses a "talking" hippopotamus that is dead to present the history of African slaves in the Americas that curiously parallels the forced translocation of the hippo

 

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What an unusual treat this film offers a perceptive and patient viewer! First, it is film is narrated for a substantive length of the film's duration by a hippopotamus, who realizes it is dead (in the present world) in at least three languages: a Namibian tribal language; Afrikaans (the language of the erstwhile colonial South Africa and South-West Africa); and Spanish, a fact that this critic discovered only on subsequent viewings, as one is initially concentrating and imbibing the English subtitles. The hippo has no perception of time but is well aware that it is already dead (inversing the techniques often used by the late Chilean director Raoul Ruiz as in his film Three Crowns of the Sailor, where the narrator quirkily admits that he is the only sailor alive while all others on the ship are dead!). The hippo's narration begins with the words "I never heard the sounds that come out of my mouth. I have no memory of sound that explained things. Two certainties--someplace like this should be my home with Africa as a name. They travel in my head together. Second, I am dead.... How do I know what a word is? Above all, what did I do to be dead?"  The hippo from South-West Africa, now known as Namibia, had been captured/stolen from that African nation and taken on a ship to Colombia in South America, by the infamous drug lord Pablo Escobar to populate his personal zoo. Escobar was eventually killed by Colombian military forces. Pepe, the talking hippo in the film only talks to us. the viewers of the film, and refers to humans he encounters as "the two legged." 

The above poster of the film encapsulates (in Spanish) the story of Pepe brought to Colombia by Escobar at the cost of 30 million dollars, which in turn must have cost the death of some 5000 people as a consequence of  the 80% of the global drug traffic orchestrated by Escobar, only to adorn his personal zoo.

Early in the film, the director introduces us to the basic characteristics of the huge animal that originally lived in Africa. Foreign tourists in a bus in Namibia are introduced by the tour conductor to Namibian natives (the bus driver is one) and the world of hippos. The bus driver tells the tourists "The hippos always lived here and we lived together.. Each animal teaches us something.. They can run and swim faster than us...If they come silently under your boat, you should get away fast, as a hippo can break the boat in two."

The introduction to hippos and their origins in Africa
in the film Pepe and its quaint relationship
with "the two legged"

Soon we switch in time to Pepe narrating his early life in Namibia with his sibling Pablito, an alpha male hippo, who eventually drives Pepe away from the hippo family he belonged after a power struggle. Pepe, while isolated, is captured and transported to Colombia for the drug baron to procreate more hippos on his private zoo. Pablito, is a possibly a discrete reference to the drug lord Pablo Escobar, who was feared for his brutal power tactics in Colombia to become rich and powerful until he was killed by the state/military (a sequence enacted in the film). Historically, Escobar did bring four hippos to his ranch with other exotic animals from all over the world. Colombia to relocated all those animals to various zoos except for the hippos (due to their weight ranging from 1 to 4.5 tons) which now populate the marshy lands near Magdalena river in that country.  

The film is made up of sequences shot in Namibia and in Colombia using drones, hidden cameras in jungles and helicopters. 

Pepe admits he doesn't remember learning his life story.
(However, this shot of real hippos swimming underwater
in the river, is captured by a drone carrying a camera.)

Director Arias' film Pepe is not limited to the Escobar connection to bring hippos from Africa to South America. His work is first a close look at the beast in the wild at close quarters with hidden cameras and cameras capturing the animals floating in the rivers. What Pepe doesn't  to tell the viewer is that beast eats grasses, vegetables, and fruits, not meat, unless it cannot find sufficient vegetation. Arias' film shifts gears to the fisherfolk on the shores of the Magdalene river, who never encountered the African beast in their lives, suddenly upsetting their fishing activities. Hippos do not attack human beings unless they are provoked on land but do attack them in water bodies, as they regard them as intruders in their territory. Today, because of Escobar, the population of hippos in the Magdalena river has apparently exceeded 160, which is higher in density than those in pockets of Africa, where there are wild animals such as lions, crocodiles and hyenas that kill and eat hippos and thus keep their population in check. The increasing population of hippos in the Magdalena river is not just a direct threat to the fisherfolk today  but the fish-oriented ecosystem, which is threatened by the large amount of hippo waste in the water lowering the oxygen levels negatively thereby affecting the lives of fishes and the fishing community alike . Though herbivorous, some 500 deaths are attributed to hippos worldwide each year, possibly in waterbodies such as rivers and lakes  Recent information on the internet states that that two hippos are going to be sent from Columbia to a zoo in Gujarat, India, and some 10 hippos to zoos in Mexico.

Hippos can swim fast in water and hide beneath the water
surface, and what appears above the water can be mistaken
for a small piece of  floating wood

The usual part of the head and ears of a hippo seen above
water in Magdalena river, while it can submerge
itself totally at will, as shown in Pepe 

Director Arias connects the hippos with a popular children's cartoon in Latin American television called "The Peter Potamus Show" where the hero is a hippo, by showing a young boy hooked to the TV screen. That's a part of the unusual structure of Arias' screenplay--a dead hippo who suddenly realizes the noise he makes is his new found ability to talk. What he talks is not drivel but his memory of Africa, his travel across oceans which he describes as a river with a bottom we can never reach--all of which come close to the oral history traditions of Africa (ref. the driver of the tourist bus in Namibia who states that each animal teaches us something)  and Latin America (the fisherfolk lore, rarely believed, but true in the case of the hippos of the Magdalena river basin). 

However. the fisherfolk get scared of hippos and the scare gets permeated to local law-keepers and then on to to higher authorities until a German hunter is recruited to find and kill "Pepe" with the help of the Colombian army somewhat like the end of the drug lord Escobar in 1993. 

One of the many hippos that play the role of Pepe
in the film Pepe

A drone shot of Pepe shot dead by a German hunter with
the support of the Colombian army with elongated shadows
of "the two legged." In reality, the (fictional?) killing of Pepe did  
not rid the Magdalena river of hippos--they still continue to exist.

The entire story of Pepe parallels the Europeans enslaving Africans for monetary gain and selling them to colonial populations in the Americas. The African slaves in the Americas can recall their roots through oral history. They often get killed without realizing what they did wrong to get killed, just like Pepe.

Director Arias switches situations and time in the film just as Pepe's narration does. Arias introduces us to a brief beauty pageant in the fisherfolk community that mimics the Miss Universe contest format with young contestants having to state to the community what they hope to do later in life. One of them appropriately wishes to be a zoo-pathologist! The social connection is possibly related to the fact that contestants from Colombia have often been strong finalists in international beauty pageants. Then there is a village where an old railroad line is creatively used to transport the fisherfolk on roller boards, without an engine, mimicking the rowing motion of their boats . 

Finally, the amazing cinematic work Pepe of director Nelson Carlos de Los Santos Arias recalls multifaceted contributions of Italian director Ermanno Olmi  while making The Tree of Wooden Clogs. Like Olmi, the Dominican director wrote the complex original screenplay, provided the music, was the major co-cinematographer and a major co-sound director. Multiple viewings could be required to absorb the plethora of cinematic styles within the film that one hopes young creative filmmakers will assimilate and utilize to make films in other countries than their own, just as this director did in Colombia and Namibia and create exciting, varied parallels tales for the minds of perceptive contemporary viewers to contemplate upon. 

The film truly deserved the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival. 

Most of all, viewers should ruminate on the final flow of Joycean stream of consciousness crafted by the original screenplay-writer/director Arias emanating from the mouth of the dying Pepe towards the end of the film, while the Colombian armed militia close in on the hippo: "I saw them from afar and immediately knew who they were. They also knew, I knew, and kept moving forward. Everything was clear. The day had no secrets. They looked beautiful. I felt them close to me, and death was simply that. That's how mine arrived--there lying with my strongest pain I have ever felt in my whole life. This sound came from my mouth explaining nothing. I spoke and dreamed for the first time. Fractal movements.... What's authentic and what's false? What's serious and what's playful? To this sound, to this space, where everything is constantly related? Banishing the very idea of an annihilating transparency, which is like a curse that does not stop repeating the same story.'' 

P.S. The two films mentioned Ruiz' Three Crowns of the Sailor and Olmi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs have been reviewed earlier on this blog. Pepe is included in the author's Best Films of 2024 list. (Click on the bold names in the post-script to access the reviews of those films)

273. Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s tenth complete feature film, “Memoria” (2021), shot in Colombia, based on his original screenplay: Metaphysics of awakening human memory through sound and sight, rather than words

 

 

“A sound like a rumble from the core of the earth” 

—Jessica (Tilda Swinton), a Scotswoman and a scientist, describing the sound that woke her up one day from slumber  in Colombia, a sound that she wishes to identify and understand (words spoken in the early part of the film)

 

“Why are you crying, when they are not of your memories?” 

—Jessica’s new-found acquaintance Hernan (the metaphoric “hard disk," as he describes himself”) says to her, after Jessica (the metaphoric “antenna”, in Hernan’s words) physically connects with Hernan by Jessica placing his palm on her arm (words spoken towards the end of the film)

Memoria is a film that recalls Carlos Reygadas’ opening and closing sequences of his Silent Light (2007), approaching metaphysical mysteries using sounds and visuals. It was not surprising for this critic that Reygadas was one of the many thanked by the filmmakers in the film’s credits. Memoria equally recalls sequences from Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 film Solaris (Kris’ sequences on earth outside his home before travelling into space and Kris viewing the liquid world of Solaris from his spaceship window) and Stalker (the child watching the glass tumbler moving off the table, aided by external vibrations). Viewers, who found Silent Light, Solaris and Stalker boring, would find Memoria exasperating with almost negligible spoken words compared to those films and mysteries deliberately left partially explained. However, for a viewer who loves the films of Reygadas and Tarkovsky—Memoria would be a strangely rewarding and exhilarating experience to view, mixing science and the history of Colombia, where director Weerasethakul detects parallels in recent times with his native Thailand. Those parallels become more apparent if the viewer has watched two of the director’s films Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) and Cemetery of Splendor (2018).

Jessica (Tilda Swinton) becomes the antenna
of "hard disk" Hernan (Elkin Diaz) by placing his palm on her hand

The archeologist Agnes (Jeanne Balibar) encourages Jessica
to touch the manmade hole in the head of a skull of a girl who 
lived in Colombia 6000 years ago.

Director Weerasethakul had spent time in Colombia to research and grapple with the parallel histories of Colombia and his native Thailand before he decided to write the original script of Memoria as an extension of ideas he had developed in his earlier films Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives and Cemetery of Splendor. His fictional character Uncle Boonmee could recall the past lives, so too in Memoria can the mysterious elder Hernan, who claims he never left that village, as he removes the scales of fishes to salt and dry them. In Memoria, there are several references to the dead being excavated in tunnels by road builders possibly referring to the dead bodies of the battles between Marxist Leninist FARC activists and the Colombian militia as well as the skeleton of a girl who had lived 6000 years ago in Colombia with a manmade hole in her skull indicating the way she died. In Cemetery of Splendor, comatose Thai soldiers were kept in hospital wards (over lands where Thai kings were buried) with bright colorful lights to induce good dreams in the still alive but comatose soldiers. None of these facts are mentioned in Memoria explicitly. It is left for an intelligent filmgoer, familiar with the director’s past works to figure out why Jessica’s eyes well with tears when she connects with “hard disk” Hernan, who knows all the past lives of the people of Colombia.

Jessica with young sound engineer Hernan
(Juan Pablo Urrego),who was never real,
presenting her the precise recorded sound

Memoria is a film on sleep, dreams, death and life. Jessica is woken from “sleep” by the strange sound and is eager to know how the elder Hernan can “sleep” without memories and watches him sleep for a while. Dreams play a part in the film as Jessica’s sister Karen claims she was affected by a strange illness after she did not feed and take care of a stray dog that had come to her doorstep. When Jessica recounts the dog story back to Karen who has been cured of her illness she does not recollect it. Who is dreaming--Jessica or Karen? The viewer learns from the sparse conversations that dot the film that Jessica has lost her husband in the recent past. Whose death certificate is Jessica asked to sign by Karen’s partner?  When Jessica connects with “hard disk“ Hernan,  Jessica’s ”antenna” allows Jessica to “recognize” her past childhood items “visible” in the room. However, earlier Jessica dreams that her dentist has died but her sister Karen and her partner assure her that he is alive and well.

Memoria communicates with its viewers using sound, silence and a visual magnetism rare in cinema. That sound that Jessica and the viewer hears for the first time, which is central to the film hits one after a long period of silence.  That thud is recreated with amazing sound engineering of the young Herman with inputs from Jessica and his studio equipment. Later on in the film, Jessica and the viewer accost other denizens of the same building where the sound engineer had worked who convince Jessica that no such person as the young Hernan ever worked there or is known to them when Jessica describes his physique. When Jessica hears the same sound on the street, one Colombian, is startled and runs for his life while others are not affected. In open areas in Colombia, the strange thud also scares a bird but no other human seem to have heard it or is affected. The strange sound switches on a wave of alarms in parked cars that subside as it started indicating it is not a human action.

Jessica had come to Colombia to study the effect of a fungus on orchids and eventually the strange sound opens her eyes to hidden histories of the land and extra-terrestrial communication. When Jessica goes to a doctor seeking a cure for her “affliction” by the strange sounds, she is refused medication but instead advised to take an interest in either art or God to cure her current state.

The cinematography of Mukdeeprom, capturing still life,
as in a painting, with birds in the far background,
uninterested in the fish, even when the characters stop speaking

Jessica recalls objects in the room
as parts of her childhood memory

In Memoria, director and original scriptwriter Weerasethakul comes close to the world of Tarkovsky and the Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem whose ideas were distilled in Solaris.

Weerasethakul is aided once again by the cinematography of Sayembhu Mukdeeprom, who captures the beauty of Colombia’s natural resources as though the scenes were still life paintings recalling the cinematography in Terence Malick’s films: The Thin Red Line, Days of Heaven, and the bison sequence in To the Wonder. Those who care to note the details of the exterior sequence of Jessica and “hard disk” Hernan, will note crow-like birds in the distance, birds that surprisingly do not seem to be attracted by the fish being dried out in the sun. Therein lies clues to the film’s narrative that unfolds in the last 15 minutes of the film.

Memoria, which won the Gold Hugo at the Chicago film festival, was given the following citation for the award: “.. for its sense of cinematic poetry and humanism. In this profound and meditative film, the director creates a story that emphasizes the connection people have to the places that they live, to the past and the present, and to the terrestrial and beyond. Tilda Swinton’s note perfect performance embodies Weerasethakul’s faith in cinema, in science, in secular mysticism, and in the possibilities of cross-cultural empathy and understanding.” The comprehensive citation captures it all. Memoria is a film that will exasperate many but be treasured by those who can pick up details in a reflective narrative and string them all together.

 

P.S.  Memoria won the Jury Prize at Cannes film Festival in 2021 and the Gold Hugo for the Best Film at the Chicago film festival. Weerasethakul’s film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010), Reygadas’ Silent Light (2007); Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972); and Malick’s  The Thin Red Line (1998), Days of Heaven (1978), and To the Wonder (2012) have been reviewed earlier on this blog. (Click on the names of the films in this post script to access each of the reviews.) Memoria is one of the author's best films of 2021. 

195. Colombian director Ciro Guerra’s “El abrazo de la serpiente” (Embrace of the Serpent) (2015) (Colombia/Argentina/Venezuela): An amazing film with deep insights on nature and civilization dedicated to “peoples whose song we will never know.”

Both posters above are predominantly in black and white,
while colour is utilized sparingly and effectively,
 as in the film

“The display I witnessed in those enchanted hours was such that I find it impossible to describe in a language that allows others to understand its beauty and splendour; all I know is that, like all those who have shed the thick veil that blinded them, when I came back to my senses, I had become another man.” ---German scientist and explorer Theodor Koch-Grunberg’s (1872-1924) writings, quoted at the opening of the film

The year 2015 witnessed the release of three outstanding films from South American countries: Land and Shade from Colombia, The Pearl Button from Chile, and Embrace of the Serpent a co-production from Colombia, Argentina and Venezuela. Each of the three films deals with history and economics. Each film present a combination of fact and fiction, the last two blending history with actors playing fictional roles that have some facts to rely on. Each of the films provide the viewer an unsettling perspective of reality that you rarely encounter in cinema these days. Each of these three is an artistic work that will satisfy a sensitive viewer who is looking for entertainment without sex, violence, and escapist action. All three films are bolstered by outstanding cinematography, direction, and incredibly mature performances by little known actors that can make big Hollywood names pale in comparison. And more importantly, these films have been made for a fraction of the cost of an average Hollywood film.

First journey: Koch-Grunberg (Bijvoet), Manduca, and young Karamakate,
with material possessions, including a phonograph

Embrace of the Serpent is a tale of two scientists/explorers: the German Theodor Koch-Grunberg (1872-1924) (played by Jan Bijvoet of Borgman) and the American Richard Evan Schultes (1915-2001) (played by Brionne Davis of Avenged). Both men were seeking a medicinal flower “yakruna” from a native shaman Karamakate (played by Nibio Torres, when young, and Antonio Bolivar, when old), who lives on the banks of the Amazon and its tributaries. 

There is a 20-30 year gap (1909 to 1940) between the two encounters of Karamakate and the two explorers from the developed world. Koch-Grunberg was an ethnographer who had fallen ill while studying the Pemon natives of Venezuela and is brought to the shaman Karamakate, who knows about yakruna and where it can be found. This flower Koch-Grunberg had been told could cure the sick explorer. Karamakate distrusts Koch-Grunberg and Manduca, Koch-Grunberg’s native companion and recently freed slave. Karamakate refuses money as he takes the German and Manduca to Colombia along the Amazon only to find Colombian soldiers misusing the plant as an hallucinatory drug and growing it in untraditional ways for profit and drug abuse. The drugged soldiers and the plants are destroyed by the enraged young Karamakate. Koch-Grunberg is thus not cured and dies even though he is sustained for a while by Karamakate blowing a hallucinogenic powder up his nostril. However, Koch-Grunberg’s detailed notes of his trip with young Karamakate and the yakruna that he saw before the plants were destroyed, survive his passing. 

Second journey: American Richrd Evan Schultes (Davis) and the older
Karamakate (Bolivar), reach where the last yakruna grows

Decades later, the American scientist Richard Evan Schultes, having read the detailed notes of Koch-Grunberg, locates Karamakate, now much older and possibly with memory fading (or at least affecting to fade) and less temperamental than in his youth. The American is also searching for yakruna for commercial reasons because the genetic resource of the flower’s seeds can apparently make rubber trees disease-free adding to the profits of the global rubber industry chain, from forests to factory. Old crafty Karmakate shows him the last yakruna flower and cleverly cooks it for Schultes. The outcome shown in Embrace of the Serpent is, to say the least, fascinating. 

What is the serpent in the title of the film? It is the Amazon. The Amazon does look like an anaconda when viewed from the sky. It appears as a massive snake that populates the Amazon banks and the director cleverly shows the birth of young anacondas early in the film. To add to the visual suggestion, there is a clever line in the script that states the natives believe the snake came from the skies. (This is not far removed from similar analogies within the traditional beliefs of natives of Chile in The Pearl Button.) 

Two aspects of this important film stand out for any viewer. The two native actors who play Karamakate overshadow the performances of professional western actors in this film. The credit not only goes to the native actors but to the script of director and co-scriptwriter Ciro Guerra, co-scriptwriter Jacques Toulemonde Vidal and the cinematographer David Gallego. One has to admit considerable fiction has been enmeshed with the two historical trips on the Amazon river separated in time by some three decades. 

The young impetuous Karamakate (Torres) with the Amazon behind him

The second aspect of the film is the deliberate choice of the director Ciro Guerra to make Embrace of the Serpent in black and white (cinematographer David Gallego) for most parts. [This deliberate choice needs to be compared with a few other important films on evil/distrust and reconciliation deliberately made in black and white with superb outcomes: Mike Nichol’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995) and Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon (2009)—all cinematic works with reflective depth and common concerns which would have had lesser impact were they made in lush colour.] It is possible that a colour version of the film Embrace of the Serpent would have emphasized the wrong elements of the tale—the formidable river and the overarching rain forests. The pivotal aspect of the film is the traditional world of the natives and their knowledge of traditional medicine orally handed over generations and kept protected from commercial misuse. When colour is used briefly by the filmmakers in Embrace of the Serpent, it is to communicate this wisdom. It is not surprising that several reviewers have noticed the parallels between Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Embrace of the Serpent. Science/scientific knowledge (here, specifically the commercial production of rare plants and genetic resources) and accumulated human wisdom are weighed against each other in both the cinematic works. Somewhere in the film Karamakate says, “Every tree, every flower brings wisdom.” The endings of both films, their release separated by half a century, will humble a reflective viewer. 

Embrace of the Serpent provides much food for thought. The journeys on the river have parallels with Homer’s tale of Ulysses voyage. In Ciro Guerra’s film, there are three major ports/stops during the river voyage. The first is a native village on the banks of the river. There is a peaceful exchange of knowledge and understanding of each other’s cultures. The natives listen to European classical music from a phonograph of Koch-Grunberg. Koch-Grunberg and Manduca dance to German music of Haydn and Handel and entertain the natives who end up stealing his compass. Koch-Grunberg is upset that his only scientific aid for navigation is lost. Karamakate sagaciously drills reason into the mind of the upset German, ironically reminding the scientist “Knowledge belongs to all. You do not understand that. You are just a white man.” Even the natives need to learn from the developed nations, the shaman appears to assert. Ironically, we learn in the film that shamans such as Karamakate were almost wiped out by the colonizers. One reason for Karamakate to agree taking Schultes on the second voyage on the river is to connect with those remnants of his tribe that had shamans. 

At the religious settlement, the trio treads with care 

The second stop is at a religious settlement run by fanatic Roman Catholic monks who brutally inculcate Christianity in the minds of innocent native kids obliterating any respect they had for traditional wisdom. The monks seem totally oblivious of the virtue of translating Christ’s pacifist teachings in real life. Karamakate, Koch-Grunberg and Manduca try to help free the native kids from the priests' influence. The freed native kids are ironically later found some 30 years later by Karamakate and Schulte as grown-up twisted Christians who have interpreted religion in a bizarre manner, taking to idolatry and cannibalism. The effect of Roman Catholic monks on the natives during the colonization period is dealt in a parallel manner in both Embrace of the Serpent and The Pearl Button. 

The final decision for the old Karamkate comes from his environment
and wisdom that he has acquired over time

The third stop in both voyages is where the yakruna flower grows. Karamakate’s reactions are different each time. It is important to note that yakruna is a plant that can heal, symbolic of the independence of the natives. And it grows on rubber trees! But commercial compulsions of the developed world always lead to loss of independence of the natives. A rubber slave pleads for death as the rubber sap pail he had nailed to a rubber tree has been emptied and he will have to face brutal consequences from his masters. It is therefore not surprising that Karamakate’s constant refrain to both explorers is to unburden themselves of their material possessions.

Embrace of the Serpent constantly pits personal material possessions against collective traditional memories. The old Karamakate says, “To become warriors, the cohiuanos must abandon all and go alone to the jungle, guided only by their dreams. In this journey, he has to find out, in solitude and silence, who he really is. He must become a wanderer and dream. Many are lost, and some never return. But those who return they are ready to face what is to come.“ The film is unusual in many respects. In the film nine languages are spoken including Spanish, Portuguese, German, Catalan, Latin and four aboriginal Amazonian languages. 

Secondly, women are almost peripheral in the film for reasons best known to the filmmkers alone.

Then, the film touches on the resources of the river itself—the fish. Karamakate specifically warns the scientist Koch-Grunberg not to fish during a particular period (possibly its breeding period to preserve its numbers) but the German does not listen and answers, “The river is full of fishes. We cannot possibly end them.” Today, oceans and rivers are rapidly losing the rich fish species and their diversity by mindless over-fishing.

Finally, there is the contrast of the messages in dreams presented in Embrace of the Serpent —the anaconda suggests that Karamakate kill the scientist Theo, the jaguar suggest the opposite. The two dreams distil the quandary of the film for the viewer—science vs human wisdom. The final action of old Karamakate before he disappears seems to reconcile the jaguar’s view and the shaman’s accumulated wisdom. The American explorer Schultes is cured of his insomnia, he can dream, and is now a changed human being. In a parallel Kubrick moment, he is at home with butterflies!

P.S. Embrace of the Serpent won the Golden Peacock at the 2015 Indian International Film Festival in Goa; the Art cinema award at the Cannes film festival; the Golden Apricot at the Yerevan film festival (Armenia); the Golden Astor at the Mar del Plata international film festival; and the Alfred P. Sloan prize at the Sundance film festival. The film is in myriad ways superior to the Hungarian film Son of Saul, which won the Best Foreign Film Oscar while Embrace of the Serpent lost to the Hungarian challenge after both were final nominees for the award. All three films Land and Shade (Colombia), The Pearl Button (Chile), and Embrace of the Serpent (all released in 2015) are on the author’s top 10 films list for that year and have been separately reviewed in detail on this blog. Another film Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) mentioned in the above review is also reviewed in detail earlier on this blog.

189. Colombian director César Augusto Acevedo’s debut film “La tierra y la sombra" (Land and Shade) (2015): A grim, yet amazingly, beautiful tale of the poor when sugar cane is symbolically no longer sweet and can kill

For a debut film, César Augusto Acevedo’s Land and Shade is amazing in its simplicity and quiet power.  

Land and Shade is powerful because it deals with two things that mean a lot to most people--home and family.  When you are poor, home could mean your house, your apartment, your hut, your piece of land that you own. In Acevedo’s Land and Shade—the word “land” refers to all those things. In Land and Shade, in halcyon days decades ago, that piece of land on which a modest house stood benefitted from the shade of a giant tree.  Decades later, the sun is obliterated not by the tree but by smoke—smoke that kills the dogs and humans without distinction in the vicinity. And the smoke comes from man-made fires to burn sugarcane crop residues as a cost effective method adopted by the farm owners to clear the land before planting a fresh sugarcane crop once again. Ecologists have been increasingly critical of this practice as it has several negative effects the industry ignores, which myopically concentrates on profits.  The word “shade” in the title Land and Shade, refers to the shade of a giant tree in the past which has been replaced by the omnipresent ash flakes from burnt sugarcane stubs in the air that blocks out the sun’s rays. The film exudes “quiet” power because its soundtrack is almost devoid of music except towards the end when a song is played—and the song is translated in the subtitles as “love is written with tears.” Ironically nobody cries in this lovely film. And spoken words are minimal.

Acevedo’s remarkable debut film Land and Shade makes one recall the tale and approach of Italian filmmaker Ermanno Olmi’s Golden Palm winner The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978). Both films deal with farm labourers.  Both deal with their dwellings. Both deal with economic disparity between rich and poor on agricultural lands. Both deal with relationships between parents and their offspring.  Both deal with the pain of leaving their rural homes that they liked. Both deal with contrasts of the poor in rural farms of the poor in urban communities. Both films employ unprofessional actors. And more importantly both films are original stories and screenplays of the respective directors themselves. Despite the common threads, Land and Shade is quite different from The Tree of Wooden Clogs. And both prove to be extraordinary films.

Grandfather Alfonso and grandson meet for the first time in their house

Acevedo’s Land and Shade begins with a static camera shot of a man walking towards the camera on a dusty road flanked by sugarcane fields.  You see a truck approaching in the distance behind the man.  As the truck nears the man, he has to step aside, close to the sugarcane fields to let the symbolic monster of industrialization pass. He is covered with dust and ash as it passes.  Much later in the film, a similar situation is again captured by the filmmaker and his cinematographer. This time the same man is walking with his grandson who is enjoying an ice-cream cone. A similar truck approaches them from behind. They step aside to let it pass. The man tries to cover his grandson as best as he can. But the dust spoils the ice cream. Not a word is spoken. The visuals and sound speak louder than words. These two parallel sequences are unforgettable once you have seen them. It is not surprising the film went on to win the Camera d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival for the cinematography of Mateo Guzmán, possibly making his debut as a feature film cinematographer as well.

Alfonso's wife (right) and daughter-in-law work as daily wage farmhands
harvesting sugarcane often faced with delayed payments of salaries

Land and Shade is a tale of five members of a rural Columbian family delicately told. Grandfather Alfonso, we are told, left his family 17 years ago (17 years before the film’s tale begins) to live in an urban dwelling. There is no evidence of Alfonso having another spouse or other offspring. His rural house is occupied by his wife, his son, his daughter-in-law, and his young grandson. His taciturn wife, who apparently knew where he was living, has called him home to look after his grown-up and married son, who is slowly dying from the ash polluted air after struggling as a daily wage earner on the sugarcane farm. Now his wife and daughter-in-law work long hours in his son’s place to make ends meet alongside male labourers.  Scenes of flying ash from the oppressive fires resemble the locust and fire scenes of Malick’s Days of Heaven.  The intensity of the family ties in the film is not imagined but has roots in the director’s own life.

Father-in-law and daughter-in-law have a moment to themselves
(the windows are closed to keep out the dust)

Director Acevedo’s reveals why he made Land and Shade in the press kit of the film distributed at Cannes Film Festival and available online. His reasons are poignant:

“La tierra y la sombra (Land and Shade) was born of personal pain. When I began writing the screenplay my mother was dead, my father was a ghost, and because it was impossible for me to generate memories, I was condemned to lose them forever. And so arose the need to make a film that would allow me to recover the people dearest to me, using cinematic language. At the time I set out to use the most private, the most important people and events to reflect upon what our lives together had been, and what they might have been. I therefore constructed a house with words and shut everything I desired inside it. I don’t know why I hoped to find them there, in this way, but I trusted in the idea of sharing a little more time together, one last time. I quickly discovered that this was a serious mistake: I’d filled a house with ghosts that wandered from room to room without recognizing each other, incapable of expressing everything they kept inside. It wasn’t easy to understand that I needed some distance in order to construct more human characters, and I was only able to advance once I’d accepted that all I longed for in the world was gone forever.”

“The film became a way of attempting to return to my roots, of facing oblivion. Despite the inevitability of the family breakdown and the solitude this brings about, I wanted to speak of the importance of maintaining the fragile ties that bind us to those we love most, regardless of the violent emotions provoked occasionally by the internal passions that devour our hearts. For this reason I chose to give a different family some time, a final opportunity to find one another and face their guilt and pain before it was too late. The dramatic power in this conflict, however, does not lie in words, but rather in the silences, in the distance between bodies, in the gazes that never meet, and in the small things, like a plate of food growing cold on the table. Because what is truly important is not found in what the characters show or say, but in what they hide from us, or what they don’t even suspect they harbour inside. Because my roots are firmly anchored in the geography of Colombia’s Valle del Cauca region, I also wanted to base the story on the microcosm set up in the film (a family of five, a tiny house, and a tree surrounded by an oppressive sugar cane field), to speak of how a false illusion of progress has threatened the history, memory and identity of an entire people. For this reason I attempted to use cinematic language to make visible some of the greatest social problems inherent in the overwhelming expansion of the sugar industry in this region: modification of the landscape, soil destruction, the bankruptcy of small-scale farmers, poverty, disease, and displacement. To me, this film responds to an urgent need to draw attention to the rural people’s sense of belonging to the land and their valiant struggle and resistance, especially important in a country where the identities of a variety of peoples are constantly under threat.”

“Land and Shade is a hymn to life, liberty, dignity, and hope. An honest attempt to clear our vision and rethink the way we see ourselves. Perhaps in this way we can understand that what binds us is something more than indifference and that only by remaining united will we be able to face oblivion. This project is another contribution to this cause, thanks to having finally understood that my gaze is what I am, and where I’m from.”

The sick and dying son views his bleak future

In 17 years, Alosnso’s house is surrounded by sugarcane fields almost choking the building. But the big tree survives. One of the most moving conversations is between grandfather and grandson. The grandson wishes he had pet puppy dog and wistfully informs his grandfather “We can’t have dogs here because they die.” So the duo tries to attract birds that will hopefully entertain the lonely child, who cannot have a dog to play with, in that fractured environment.

Land and Shade and the 2013 Chilean film The Quispe Girls (based on a true story that took place in 1974) are examples of resurgent South American cinema by committed young filmmakers who discuss pertinent and real issues with non-professional actors, a very well thought-out script and amazing photography in their very first respective feature films. Yes, both are extraordinary debut films. Colombia should be proud of Acevedo’s persistence to make this film against all odds, eventually winning awards at Cannes Film Festival, the Best Film award at the Bratislava International Film Festival (Slovakia), and multiple awards at the Thessaloniki Film Festival (Greece). We should be proud of a man like Acevedo, who recognizes the importance of his parents and record it for posterity through a slightly fictionalized cinematic tale of quality. This is one of the most important films of 2015 proving once again that good cinema can be made with limited budgets by committed, creative filmmakers..

P.S. Land and Shade is on the author’s top 10 films of 2015 list. The three films mentioned in the above review-- The Tree of Wooden Clogs, Days of Heaven, and The Quispe Girls have all been reviewed in detail earlier on this blog.

Official Trailer - LAND AND SHADE directed by César Acevedo from Burning Blue on Vimeo.