Qt3 Movie Podcast: Embrace of the Serpent

Movies
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One of my favorite things about looking at the listener emails is getting to read what Chris has to say about the movies we watch. His comments are detailed and insightful and on-point, and often personal. I really like that part of the week. So it annoys me when I don't adequately fold them in, or worse in this case, get carried away and forget to bring them in at all. I'm so careful about not looking at the other 3x3 submissions in the inbox, though, that sometimes I forget.

At any rate, I like the things Chris has to say about Embrace of the Serpent because they are germane to the discussion on a couple of points, and I should have remembered that.

Chris disagrees with me about the black and white, and I love the way he puts it:

"I think the movie being in black and white worked. I think it made me focus more on the characters than the beauty of the landscape which might have drawn my attention if it was in color."

Now I really like this point. It's a great contrast to my complaint, and I think Tom's about how using B&W was squandering the beauty of the jungle. I think I even dismissed it as a "tiresome" choice (I may have used a different word). Chris makes a good case for it with a simple statement and I wish I'd included it.

"I think the actors who portrayed young and old Karamakate were awesome. Young Karamakate's laugh was really strange and kind of discordant but very interesting."

I like this too. My first time through I was watching it with my girlfriend and she noticed, well before I did, that this older dude was the same character. I like how Chris describes the characterization, and I wish I'd focused on that more. On the nuances of those two performances. I've often complained about Daniel Day Lewis winning Best Actor for My Left Foot when Hugh O'Connor did so much work laying the foundation for his performance. Chris makes me want to go back and look at what both actors in this are doing again, in order to see what turns into what. And what doesn't.

Chris also brings up the butterflies, which I totally forgot to bring up. I really wish we'd tapped into that, because as soon as I saw that image of the butterflies around Karamakate I thought of that weird scene in Dallas Buyers Club. Remember that? I really wanted to bring that up and forgot. If I'd been focused on the email I would have remembered.

"I very much liked the time shifting without any sort of…title cards…The movie thinks enough about its audience that it doesn't need to do that."

Spot on observation, Chris. As is your point about having to face the fact of cultural and physical genocide, which this movie forces us to do and upon which I should have focused more in describing why this movie worked for me.

So that's why I'm sorry I forgot to include these notes. They are excellent.

22

I believe we've contended about tipping on this subject before. My apology was warranted. Don't make me get all Ann Landers on you.

23

The Back Mass comments section. :)

24

The Spide-Man one with the glasses making his vision blurry.

25

I like this post. Lots to think about. Unfortunately, this island nation has just voted to detonate ourselves off into the North Sea so I only have one question: Chris, can I bunk up in your gaff for a bit while I process a career change? Tx

26

I just learned a new word! Well, not a new word per se. I just didn't know gaff could be used like that. I thought it was something used for fishing or for folding origami unicorns.

I love learning new words. Thank you, Peter!

27

Introducing a self-contained tool that circumvents a long tradition, often socially transmitted, is often equivalent to the introduction of Christianity or gunpowder. Forget historical examples, how many people say that cell phones are the end of face-to-face conversation, or that social media is the end of personal relationships, or that texting is the end of written language? These are the concerns of a culture that's previously placed a premium on the labor of social interaction, facing the advent of technologies that drastically reduce or remove that labor.

Maybe the ability for anyone to navigate anywhere on their own, with minimal training and no support, will cause the tribe to decohere. Maybe it'll undermine their spiritual connection to the stars. Who knows? It's just not as hard for me to imagine someone not taking technological sophistication as a natural good, under such circumstances.

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Hey all. In case you missed it on Twitter, we've had to switch the movie to Neon Demon, and we won't be able to record until Monday night. We are blaming Brexit.

29

And we haven't even started on the cockney rhyming!

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Dingus, when it comes to battlefields, were you thinking mostly of ones where large scale battles took place or can smaller... conflicts make the location worthy of choice?

Sorry for such a late question.

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You are totally free to interpret that question of scale as liberally as you like, Chris.

For instance, I fully expect Kelly to confine his battlefields to the bedroom and fast food restaurants. So the 3x3 cop is starting there, as far as setting the bar is concerned.

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Just watched the movie and haven’t listened to the podcast yet, but I didn’t read what he said as particularly sincere. He was rationalising his selfishness (or whatever you want to call it) in a way he thought Manduca and Karamakate would respond to, so they would support him. It may or may not have been that cynically thought out, but that’s how it came across to me.

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Listened to it now. Very much agree with Christien on almost everything, except possibly the ending, though I don’t have a firm opinion on that. Very surprised that it didn’t resonate with Tom, and that so much of what it was trying to do went by him. It does seem like a lot of the disconnect might have been caused by confusion, eg the sequence when they get to the dead tree with the yakruna plants. Have you watched it again, and did it resonate more if so?

To elaborate on what Christien was saying re: ending the world, Karamakate says before he burns the tree “It must not be cultivated”. Seems a pretty clear metaphor for agriculture and industry in general bringing about destruction, especially for indigenous tribes and their cultures - which has been emblematised throughout the movie by the rubber trade. In general there’s quite a lot in the movie that is both literal and metaphorical/allegorical - the whole “I can’t dream” motif, for instance.

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I have not rewatched Embrace of the Serpent, but I did just watch the director’s latest movie, Waiting for the Barbarians.

It’s another story about imperialism, not quite as lyrical as Embrace of the Serpent. But I loved it and I was able to follow what was going on with considerably less confusion. :)

-Tom

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Have you guys watched Birds of Passage (Pajaros de Verano) as well? l talked a bit about it in the 5 Elements thread (took a loss on that one) , and loved it even more than Embrace.

Thanks for bringing up Guerra’s new movie, Tom. l will try to watch it. Hopefully, Guerra and Pattinson will be enough to compensate the presence of Johnny Depp in the cast.

36

I have not seen Birds of Passage! Thanks for the reminder.

I will be curious what you think of Depp in Waiting for the Barbarians. I was also a bit concerned about what seems like stunt casting, but I thought it served the movie. A bit distracting, to be sure, but appropriate.

-Tom

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Yep, l will try to find it in the next days. l almost have an allergic reaction to Depp. l loved Pattinson in everything l watched he was in so far though (especially Good Times), so l’m rather optimistic about that one.