Tropical malady – making a film in the heart of… | Little White Lies

First Person

Trop­i­cal mal­a­dy – mak­ing a film in the heart of darkness

08 Jun 2016

Words by Adam Woodward

Monochrome image showing people in a small boat on a body of water, surrounded by foliage. One person in the boat appears to be wearing tribal attire.
Monochrome image showing people in a small boat on a body of water, surrounded by foliage. One person in the boat appears to be wearing tribal attire.
Embrace of the Ser­pent direc­tor Ciro Guer­ra on the logis­ti­cal and spir­i­tu­al chal­lenge of shoot­ing in a rainforest.

Before he left for the Philip­pines to begin pro­duc­tion on Apoc­a­lypse Now, Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la, con­cerned about the prac­ti­cal­i­ties of shoot­ing a film in such a demand­ing envi­ron­ment, sought coun­sel from his close friend and men­tor Roger Cor­man. Don’t go,” was his sup­port­ive yet sober­ing advice. Of the many fabled anec­dotes asso­ci­at­ed with Coppola’s mas­ter­piece, this one struck a chord with Colom­bian writer/​director Ciro Guer­ra as he embarked on the great­est quest of his career so far.

Shot entire­ly on loca­tion in the dark heart of the Ama­zon rain­for­est, Embrace of the Ser­pent is an intox­i­cat­ing, trans­for­ma­tive jour­ney to a time and place vir­tu­al­ly untouched by civil­i­sa­tion. Loose­ly based on the field notes of two sci­en­tists who vis­it­ed the region in the ear­ly part of the 20th cen­tu­ry, the film tells the sto­ry of the indige­nous peo­ples whose sacred con­nec­tion to the land and riv­er has been slow­ly erod­ed by West­ern inter­fer­ence. It is a unique med­i­ta­tive study of human­i­ty, specif­i­cal­ly colo­nial and eccle­si­as­ti­cal his­to­ry. Above all, though, it is an extra­or­di­nary piece of film­mak­ing; the result of years of inten­sive plan­ning and soul-search­ing. Here, Guer­ra goes deep on the logis­ti­cal and spir­i­tu­al chal­lenges he and his crew faced.

The Ama­zon is very spe­cial. It’s not a place where you can bring all the lux­u­ries of a for­eign pro­duc­tion. You real­ly need the guid­ance of the peo­ple who know it, the peo­ple who live there. You need their full sup­port. We spent two and half years research­ing, going back and forth in the Colom­bian Ama­zon look­ing for a place to shoot the film. We found this jun­gle in the north west Ama­zon, a jun­gle that had not been heav­i­ly affect­ed by tourism or com­merce or agri­cul­ture. We start­ed work­ing with the local com­mu­ni­ty, meet­ing with them, learn­ing from them and ask­ing for their per­mis­sion to shoot in their home. And ask­ing them to be a part of the film. That was very impor­tant, and luck­i­ly that was what they also wanted.

If the envi­ron­ment had been against us, the film would have failed. We couldn’t allow the bud­get to bal­loon, for the shoot to go over for even a sin­gle day, but the size of the pro­duc­tion actu­al­ly worked in our favour because we weren’t that many peo­ple – we were able to fit into the envi­ron­ment in an organ­ic way. The crew was about 40 peo­ple, and this did pro­vide cer­tain chal­lenges and obsta­cles. For exam­ple, the scenes we shot on the riv­er were a night­mare because we had a boat with the actors, a boat with the cam­era, a boat with the sound, a boat with the pro­duc­tion design, and final­ly a pro­duc­tion boat. We only had a minute before they start­ed to drift apart so every take was extreme­ly dif­fi­cult not only to orches­trate but also in terms of hav­ing to reset.

When you make a film like this, it’s all about prepa­ra­tion, account­ing for every logis­ti­cal even­tu­al­i­ty. We had to know exact­ly what shots we need­ed for each scene, we couldn’t afford any sur­pris­es. Still, noth­ing was easy. It’s the hard­est thing I’ve ever done, and I think every­one on the pro­duc­tion felt the same way. Look­ing back, though, the most dif­fi­cult part was writ­ing the script. Arriv­ing to the script was tremen­dous­ly dif­fi­cult. I thought I would nail it right away but it took three years. I got lost in the process many times. But what I love about being a screen­writer is I’m able to react and change things and find a way to allow the film to grow and find its own voice.

This was also a great spir­i­tu­al test. It’s dif­fi­cult to put into words… It was a unique expe­ri­ence. I spent sev­er­al years learn­ing to see the world from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive and now noth­ing looks the same. The hard­est part is going back to nor­mal­i­ty, get­ting used to mod­ern life again. I lost a lot of weight mak­ing this movie – not phys­i­cal weight but spir­i­tu­al, intel­lec­tu­al weight. After the film was fin­ished I felt lighter. That’s the best way I can describe it. The jun­gle has its own log­ic, and you have to be mind­ful and respect­ful of that. It’s not just a loca­tion. It’s some­thing… more.”

Embrace of the Ser­pent is in cin­e­mas 10 June.

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