By Susan Granger
Special to WestportNow
Having recently returned from a trip on the Amazon River in South America, I was intrigued by “Embrace of the Serpent,” the Oscar-nominated meditation about the devastation of colonialism on the Cohiuano, one of Colombia’s indigenous tribes, brutally ravaged by the rubber industry and Roman Catholic missionaries in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The story focuses on a native shaman named Karamakate, played alternately by Nilbio Torres and Antonio Bolivar Salvador. Angry and grieving, he’s the sole survivor of his people and, over the course of 40 years, develops a relationship with two different scientists.
Filmed primarily in black and white and based on the real-life journals of two explorers who traveled through Amazonia during the last century, it’s been adapted by Colombian writer/director Ciro Guerra and JacquesToulemonde Vidal.
From 1903-1909, Theodor Koch-Grunberg (Jan Bijvoet), an ailing German ethnologist, travels downriver by canoe seeking the sacred, difficult-to-find Yakruna plant, said to have unique healing powers. This miraculously curative hallucinogen is found on rubber trees, according to his native guide Manduca.
Decades later, Richard Evans Schultes (Brionne Davis), an American botanist retraces his predecessor’s path. Their explorations and experiences in the rain-forest are intertwined, as they’re forced to discard their baggage, the accouterments of so-called civilization, and return to a more primitive state of nature.
“The indigenous world speaks of a different concept of time,” Guerra explains. “Time to them is not a line, as we see it in the West, but a series of multiple universes happening simultaneously. It is a concept that has been referred to as ‘time without time’ or ‘space without space.’”
Enlightening and thought-provoking, it’s reminiscent of historic culture-clashes like Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and Werner Herzog’s “Aguirre: Wrath of God” and “Fitzcarraldo.”
In Spanish and various tribal languages with English subtitles, on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Embrace of the Serpent” is an evocative, exotic 8, surreal in its primal eloquence and spirituality.
After “Borat” and “Bruno,” Sacha Baron Cohen pushes vulgarity to a new level in “The Brothers Grimsby,” a British spy spoof, revolving around two vastly different brothers, born in the northern England seaport of Grimsby and then separated for 28 years after their parents’ death.
Dimwitted Nobby (Cohen) is a heavily-tattooed, working-class bloke/soccer fanatic with a libidinous wife (Rebel Wilson) and 11 foul-mouth’d kids, one named Django Unchained, another called Gangham Style and a third, Luke, short for Leukemia, a disease which Nobby claims he has to get extra welfare money.
When Nobby discovers that his long-lost younger brother Sebastian (Mark Strong) is a suave MI6 agent, the siblings team up to combat a global crime syndicate, journeying to South Africa to apprehend Rhonda George (Penelope Cruz), who is planning a lethal terrorist attack at the World Cup final in Chile.
At one point – in the film’s signature sequence – as they’re being chased by assassins, they hide inside an elephant’s vagina. When a male elephant arrives on the scene, what occurs next is vividly explicit in its disgusting carnality.
Then there’s another coarse, highly publicized bit involving a computer-generated Donald Trump.
Unfortunately, Sacha Baron Cohen’s real-life wife, talented comedienne Isla Fisher, appears only briefly. Similarly, the talents of Barkhad Abdi and Gabourney Sidibe are also wasted.
Scripted by Sacha Baron Cohen, Phil Johnston and Peter Baynham and episodically directed by Louis Leterrier, it’s 83 minutes of scattershot jokes about excrement, pedophilia, crack addiction and HIV-AIDS.
On the Granger Gauge, “The Brothers Grimsby” is a flatulent, yet flaccid 4. Gross? Yes. Funny? No.
“London Has Fallen,” the sequel to “Olympus Has Fallen” (2013), shifts the focus from Washington, D.C. to London, where Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) once again singlehandedly protects President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart).
Instead of North Korean terrorists, the culprits are from the Middle East, out for revenge over a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan that killed the daughter of international arms dealer Amir Barkawi (Alon Moni Aboutboul) at her lavish wedding, where he was the primary target.
“Vengeance must always be profound and absolute,” malevolent Barkawi declares.
Destruction begins during the funeral of the British Prime Minister, who died unexpectedly during what was supposed to be ‘routine surgery.’ As television audiences around the world watch in horror, heads of state are systematically assassinated, as Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament are demolished.
Barkawi’s barbaric son (Waleed F. Zuaiter) wants to kidnap President Asher and execute him on YouTube, so it’s up to agent Banning to keep him safe, aided by an MI6 agent (Charlotte Riley).
Meanwhile, back home, the Vice President (Morgan Freeman), Secret Service Director (Angela Bassett) and the Secretary of Defense (Melissa Leo) watch the debacle on a video screen in the situation room with their elite advisory cohorts (Robert Forster, Jackie Earle Haley) .
Making his English-language debut, Iranian-born Swede Babek Najafi directs but, unfortunately, many of his action-packed sequences defy credibility. Given the cheesy digital effects, it’s almost impossible to follow who is shooting at whom and where they are.
On the Granger Gauge, “London Has Fallen” is a faltering 4, filled with profanity, over-the-top violence and gratuitous sadism.
( Editor’s Note: Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has been on radio/television as an anchorwoman and movie/drama critic for many years. See her reviews at www.susangranger.com.)
