Truly Amazonian | Oscar Nominee Ciro Guerra on ‘Embrace of the Serpent’

Very few Oscar nominees this year are as distinctive as Embrace of the Serpent, a sharply black-and-white descent into the Amazon, in which westerners glimpse the world cracking open as they pursue mind-altering plants. It is the first Colombian film nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, and director Ciro Guerra is currently visiting Los Angeles to drum up publicity and, perhaps, simply explain what his surreal motion picture really means.

I sat down with Ciro Guerra at the Paradigm offices in Beverly Hills to learn a little bit more about what the Oscar nomination means in Colombia, filming in the Amazon, the importance of stark black-and-white photography, and the dangers of taking hallucinogenic drugs while making a film. The following interview contains a few, relatively minor spoilers for Embrace of the Serpent, which opens in limited release on February 17, 2016.

See this movie, and see it on the big screen if possible. It is a unique motion picture in a landscape otherwise teeming with familiarity.

Oscilloscope Pictures

Crave: How are you?

Ciro Guerra: I’m in the middle of a bit of a storm.

What’s it like? How long have you been in town?

A couple of days. Yesterday was the first day that I realized we were Oscar-nominated. [Laughs.] 

Is it a constant parade of publicity? What’s your job right now, at this stage of it?

Yes, it’s been… yeah, my job is to give interviews mostly. I’m doing a lot of interviews because the film is getting a release next week in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, U.S. and Canada. So I’m talking to a lot of people from all over. So yeah, that’s mostly what I’ve been doing! [Laughs.]

“I don’t think I can go back to Colombia if I win [the Oscar] … It’s going to be so crazy.”

Are you sick of it already?

Eh… no, no, no, no. Not “sick.” Sometimes they… it depends on the interview. When the interview is by someone who is lazy…

Oh, well, I’d better step up my game. So this is the first Colombian film to be nominated for an Academy Award. Are there parades in your honor? What’s it like from that perspective?

Yes, in Colombia people have really flipped out. The people are really happy. We got a call from the Colombian president congratulating us, and the press just went crazy. It’s a country that always has a need to… whatever excuse for a party, you know?

So yeah, people in my hometown are crazy, you know, have gone insane about it. The film is back in the Colombian cinemas and it’s playing like a blockbuster basically, which is insane for this kind of film. And yeah, so many doors have been opening up for the film: it’s getting a release in the kind of places that would never… it’s something that’s never happened for a Colombian film.

Congratulations for that. If you win do you have to donate the Oscar to the capital building so they can put it on display, or are you going to keep it for yourself?

I don’t think I can go back to Colombia if I win it.

What…?!

Yeah, it’s going to be so crazy. [Laughs.]

Oscilloscope Pictures

This movie is gorgeous and lovely and yet I got this… have you read Hearts of Darkness?

Have I read it? Yeah, Joseph Campbell…

I couldn’t help but get vibe off of it, that descent. Tell me about where this film comes from emotionally, for you.

Yeah, it just comes from a huge sense of curiosity and a huge sense of wonder to the world. For me the Amazon, making a film in the Amazon, was a lifelong dream of mine. For us in Colombia the Amazon is half the country, but it’s just a big mystery, so it’s the unknown. It’s something that we hear very seldom about but, you know, it’s just a big mystery.

So when I was doing some research about it to see what I could find out about it, just learning, I came across the story of the explorers and I thought it was a fascinating story. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t been told. What I really related through them was these people who leave their lives behind, their families behind, their countries behind and just delve into uncharted territory for three, four years. Seventeen years in the case of Schultes.

And that’s kind of like the way you feel when you’re starting a film. It’s like, you don’t know how long it’s going to take you. You don’t know how it’s going to be, how long it’s going to be before you see the other side. It’s just uncharted territory if you’re making a true film.

“When you’re there you’re constantly confronted about who you are and what you believe and what you think of life, and what your principles are.”

And you run into, while you were making the movie, a lot of metaphors for the human condition as well.

Mm-hmm.

Because I just imagine how difficult it must be to shoot on the Amazon. What did you prepare for and what surprised you?

Actually for me, it’s hard to believe, but the hardest part of this film was the script.

Really?

Yeah, because I had to really… it’s a process that almost drives me crazy. Because during the process I was doing research and going back and forth and visiting different places of the Amazon, spending time with the Amazonian people. Just stopping to think like a westerner, you know. When you’re there you’re constantly confronted about who you are and what you believe and what you think of life, and what your principles are.

So as the film became infused with Amazonian myth, Amazonian storytelling, there was a moment in which you’re completely lost. At the end it was my co-screenwriter [Jacques Toulemonde Vidal] who came in, and we worked for a year on the final draft of this script. But he had the vision to see the script from outside. I was just so inside of this maze of different times and different storytelling and different everything that it was just crazy.

Oscilloscope Pictures

What did your co-writer add? Was it a structure, or did he take things out? What was missing from your earlier draft?

Distance.

Just distance?

Distance and someone who could connect… the process of the script, the creative process of the film is sort of building a bridge between making a film that is Amazonian, truly Amazonian, and making a film that viewers around the world can understand.

And this bridge stuff was really difficult to build because when you’re going to Amazonian myth and storytelling, you wouldn’t understand anything about it. It’s just a way of telling things [that] you have never seen. So how do you connect that? What he did was, he was able to make that connection, you know?

Through dialogue, or…?

Through structure, through dialogue, through character development.

I’m curious, was it always the idea put a lot of emphasis on mind-expanding drugs?

Mmm-hmm.

As a cultural idea, and also just opening your eyes philosophically to new interpretations of what’s around you…

No, that was something that inherently part of the story. But we didn’t want to highlight it too much because yeah, it could easily become a “trip” film, a drug movie, and we were thinking it’s a film that deals with these elements, but it deals with so many more. 

“When we went there we realized that it was not going to be possible to portray, in any kind of film, the colors of the Amazon.”

Towards the end you start playing with color, but the majority of the film is shot in very striking, very stark black-and-white. Was that mostly so you could turn it around at the end, and really blow our minds, or was that a drug metaphor that you discovered later?

Yes, the film had to be black-and-white from the beginning. It was clear because the inspiration for the film, the visual inspiration is the image of the explorers, and what I saw in those images – which [are] almost daguerrotype pictures, like a black-and-white photographic plate – it’s an Amazon that is completely different than the Amazon that we have in our minds. You know, all the exuberance and exoticism is taken away.

And when we went there we realized that it was not going to be possible to portray, in any kind of film, the colors of the Amazon. The true colors of the Amazon. It just becomes a pasture, through flaming and through… and what those colors mean to the Amazonian people? You cannot possibly think of portraying that. So we just let the audience imagine this. We hoped to trigger the audience’s imagination. I could talk for hours about this. [Laughs.] There’s just so many reasons!

It just affects the film on so many levels. I couldn’t do it any other way really. It was the idea of unlimited perspective, that we have on life. The Amazonian people say that if you only trust your senses then you’re missing out on a lot of things, and science has proven this. We need many more senses in order to feel everything that the world has.

There’s a type of shrimp [the mantis shrimp] that has so many more cones in its eyes that it can see a lot more colors than we can. Just the idea of that blows my mind. The only way I could think to illustrate that would be something like you did, just drain it and introduce color later.

Yeah, so yeah. So the idea of a perspective that eventually expands. But that sequence at the end is about, basically a cinematographic representation of what a spiritual journey is to the natives, and one part that they are very clear about is that the world cracks open when you have a real spiritual experience. The world cracks open and it fractures, and through that fracture you get to glimpse… not see, but glimpse the immensity of the world.

Oscilloscope Pictures

Is it possible to tell a story like this without having that breakthrough yourself?

Yes. I didn’t do it.

Were you tempted?

Yeah, I was curious at the beginning but doing my side work, I spent time with shamans. They said, “You shouldn’t do it if you’re thinking about a movie, because it could punish you. You shouldn’t do it for a reason.” A totalitarian reason, anyway. So if in the back of your mind you’re thinking about the movie, it’s going to get…

So I have anxiety problems, therefore I should never do hallucinogenic drugs?

I don’t know. Maybe. You shouldn’t expect anything out of it. And if I did it thinking about a movie, I would be expecting something out of it. Expecting it to give me something. That’s a mistake.

“We realized that what was going to make the film unique and particular was that we changed the perspective of the film, so it’s from the indigenous point of view.”

That makes sense.

I mean the power of plants is a sacred thing. It’s a religion. It’s not something that you do for fun. It’s not something that you do for money. You get there after a process, and so yeah, the people of the Amazon are very worried that it becomes like a recreational drug or something, because this is serious stuff, you know? People can die in the middle of this process.

There have been other portrayals, cinematically of the Amazon. Maybe not of that specific reason, but in general. One film I thought about a bit while watching this was Medicine Man, with Sean Connery. I don’t know if you’ve seen it…

I saw bits of it when I was very young. It’s an old film.

It’s also about seeking cures for diseases in plants that have medicinal properties. When you were making the film did you think about other portrayals of the Amazon? How did that affect your film, if at all?

Yeah, we decided to step away from all that. At the beginning I said I’m going to look at all these films and maybe get some influences, but then we realized that what was going to make the film unique and particular was that we changed the perspective of the film, so it’s from the indigenous point of view.

Oscilloscope Pictures

But beyond, for example, the color that we’ve talked about, what was your mission statement? How do you keep it clear and defined? How do you tell your crew how to shoot a scene from that perspective?

Basically it was the whole process of the film. I don’t believe that you should know exactly the film you’re making before you make it. There should be an adventure in making it. There should be a discovery in making it. The film should reveal itself to you through the people that you work with, through the actors, through the actors, through the locations, through everything, because if you know exactly what kind of film you’re going to make… I don’t find the point in making it. [Laughs.] There’s no point in making it, because what you’re going to do is… that’s a process, like making a car. I don’t think films should be that. A film should be an experience, making it, so that it becomes an experience watching it. 

There’s the danger, though, that once you start making the movie you don’t find it, isn’t there?

Yeah, that’s always the danger.

Have you experienced that in your career? Or has it always come together by the end?

I’ve felt lost at several points but yeah, if the movie is coming from a true place it will find its own way. 

“If you know exactly what kind of film you’re going to make… I don’t find the point in making it.”

Did you ever feel lost while making Embrace of the Serpent?

Oh yeah, especially during the process of writing. I was completely lost for two years.

Two years?! 

Yeah.

What were you doing during those two years? You couldn’t always have been typing about.

Yeah, for me typing is the… five percent of writing is typing. 

For me it’s like ninety.

Really?

Oh, I seem to do it all with my fingers. I turn my brain off.

[Laughs.] Yeah, typing for me… it’s very difficult for me to sit down and write. Extremely difficult. I hate it. So for me, the writing process is about finding the story, finding what the story is about, what the characters are about, what the structure is. Yeah, once that is done you try it. But what I was doing is, I was wandering about the Amazon, going from place to place, getting my mind whipped and all my beliefs shattered and destroyed, and preconceptions and notions destroyed. Every time.

Oscilloscope Pictures

That’s incredible. What was it like for your crew? Were they gung ho the whole time or was it a difficult shoot?

No, it was. If they hadn’t been such a committed, passionate crew that really believed in this project and was really adventurous, this film would not have been made. Because there was a point at the end of the first week of shooting, I said, “This film is going to be impossible. We’re not going to make it to the end.” And I could see myself at the seventh week trying to put together the patches of what we managed to get, and making a new film! [Laughs.]

Because everything had to work out so perfectly for us to be able to make the film on this timeline, on this budget, that… it never happens, you know? There’s always complications and problems and everything. But this crew just rose up to the challenge and they were really so passionate and committed. There were moments in which I was completely destroyed and tired and I couldn’t go on, and the crew just kept me going. They were unbeatable. They were like the T-1000, the villain in Terminator 2…? 

The T-1000, yeah.

Which is just relentless. Because they had a difficult experience and they were really happy making it. It was a really happy experience. It was demanding, definitely, and physically exhausting, but very satisfying on an emotional and spiritual level.

“This film was out there, it grabbed me and used me and just dumped me.”

How long ago did you finish the film?

The film was completed in April. Last April [in 2015]. 

Now that you have a bit of distance from it, how do you feel about it? Obviously it was an important experience making it, but…

With this film it happened… something that didn’t happen to me with my two previous films… is that I’m completely detached from it. 

That’s impressive.

I feel like it’s not… those other films I feel like they were very personal, and they came from me. This film was out there, it grabbed me and used me and just dumped me. It just needed to exist and it found me, you know? So I feel very detached from it. It’s just something that I look at it and go, “Whoa, did we make that?” But it has just such strength and such an energy that I just feel like I channeled it.

Are you working on something now? Are you painfully writing a screenplay as we speak?

After finding a co-screenwriter whom I could actually work with, I found the great pleasures of working with screenwriters. People who really know how to write and really love how to write. 

That’s fantastic. What’s the secret? Is it sharing the idea and letting the other person do the actual typing now?

Yeah, it’s about the collaborative process, and what you do is not typing but thinking, you know? And thinking together and finding someone who really has a talent for just the handicraft of writing. Like that, or that character and scene.

Top Photo: Oscilloscope Pictures

William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.

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