twi-ny recommended events

INGMAR BERGMAN CENTENNIAL RETROSPECTIVE: SUMMER WITH MONIKA / HOUR OF THE WOLF / PERSONA

Harry (Lars Ekborg) and Monika (Harriet Andersson) run away to start a new life in Summer with Monika

SUMMER WITH MONIKA (SOMMAREN MED MONIKA) (Ingmar Bergman, 1953)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
February 23, 24, 26, 27, March 3
Series runs February 7 – March 15
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Swedish director Ingmar Bergman shocked the film world in 1953 with the controversial Summer with Monika, the tale of two young lovers who run away from their families and go on a brief but intense sexual adventure. The film featured full-frontal nudity by Harriet Andersson, with whom Bergman had a short relationship; the movie was actually edited down by distributor Kroger Babb to focus on the sex and nudity, renaming it Monika, the Story of a Bad Girl! and marketing it to US audiences as an exploitation picture. But Film Forum is screening the superb original version as part of its five-week centennial celebration of Bergman’s birth. Based on the 1951 novel by Per Anders Fogelström, Summer with Monika takes place in a working-class area of Stockholm, where Harry (Lars Ekborg) and Monika (Harriet Andersson) toil away in a glassware factory. Harry lives with his ailing father (Georg Skarstedt), while Monika sleeps in her family’s kitchen. Both teens are bored with their already dull and unfulfilling lives. So when they meet in a café, the bold, forward Monika lures the shy, fragile Harry into what begins as a summer of fun, as they steal Harry’s father’s boat and head out to their own private hideaway, but ends up as something very different. Bergman boils down an entire relationship — courtship, romance, children, breakup, in a way a precursor to his later epic, Scenes from a Marriage — into ninety-seven sharp, intuitive moments, turning clichéd plot twists into subtle statements on life and family. Cinematographer Gunnar Fischer shoots the film in a dark, gloomy black-and-white, with stark close-ups — Monika stares directly into the camera at one point, challenging the audience — and long shots of water and nature, while Erik Nordgren’s score is kept spare, with Bergman favoring natural sound and light.

Harriet Andersson stars as a fierce, independent spirit in Ingmar Bergman’s Summer with Monika

Andersson, who would go on to make many more films with Bergman, including Sawdust and Tinsel, Smiles of a Summer Night, Cries and Whispers, and Fanny and Alexander, is enticing as Monika, who doesn’t mind stepping on people’s souls while asserting herself as an independent woman, while Ekborg, who had a small part in Bergman’s The Magician, shows plenty of vulnerability as Harry, who wants to do the right thing and is ready to at least try to be a grown-up when things get complicated. The film is still shocking after all these years, and still rings true. “I want summer to go on just like this,” Monika says. But there are always other seasons, and more summers, to come. Summer with Monika is screening February 23, 24, 26, and 27 and March 3 in the Film Forum series, which continues through March 15 with such other seasonal Bergman works as Smiles of a Summer Night, Summer Interlude, and Autumn Sonata.

Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman alter ego Max von Sydow pull up to shore in Hour of the Wolf

HOUR OF THE WOLF (VARGTIMMEN) (Ingmar Bergman, 1968)
Film Forum
February 24 and 28, March 1, 2, 5, 9
filmforum.org

One of Ingmar Bergman’s most critically polarizing films — the director himself wrote, “No, I made it the wrong way” three years after its release — Hour of the Wolf is a gripping examination of an artist’s psychological deterioration. Bergman frames the story as if it’s a true tale being told by Alma Borg (Liv Ullmann) based on her husband Johan’s (Max von Sydow) diary, which she has given to the director. In fact, as this information is being shown in words onscreen right after the opening credits, the sound of a film shoot being set up can be heard behind the blackness; thus, from the very start, Bergman is letting viewers know that everything they are about to see might or might not be happening, blurring the lines between fact and fiction in the film itself as well as the story being told within. And what a story it is, a gothic horror tale about an artist facing both a personal and professional crisis, echoing the life of Bergman himself. Johan and Alma, who is pregnant (Ullmann was carrying Bergman’s child at the time), have gone to a remote island where he can pursue his painting in peace and isolation. But soon Johan is fighting with a boy on the rocks, Alma is getting a dire warning from an old woman telling her to read Johan’s diary, and the husband and wife spend some bizarre time at a party in a castle, where a man walks on the ceiling, a dead woman arises, and other odd goings-on occur involving people who might be ghosts. Bergman keeps the protagonists and the audience guessing as to what’s actually happening throughout: The events could be taking place in one of the character’s imaginations or dreams (or nightmares), they could be flashbacks, or they could be part of the diary come to life. Whatever it is, it is very dark, shot in an eerie black-and-white by Sven Nykvist, part of a trilogy of grim 1968-69 films by Bergman featuring von Sydow and Ullmann that also includes Shame and The Passion of Anna. Today, Hour of the Wolf feels like a combination of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining with elements of Mozart’s The Magic Flute — which Bergman would actually adapt for the screen in 1975 and features in a key, extremely strange scene in Hour of the Wolf. But in Bergman’s case, all work and no play does not make him a dull boy at all. Hour of the Wolf is screening February 24 and 28 and March 1, 2, 5, and 9 in Film Forum’s centennial celebration of the birth of Ingmar Bergman.

Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson come together in Ingmar Bergman’s dazzling Persona

PERSONA (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
Film Forum
February 23-25, March 1-3, 7
filmforum.org

Ingmar Bergman’s magnificently complex 1966 avant-garde masterpiece, Persona, is not just about the relationship between an actress who has suddenly decided to stop speaking and the young nurse caring for her but about the very power of film as a narrative device able to explore and examine the psychological behavior of characters both fictional and real. Persona opens with mysterious, penetrating music by Lars Johan Werle joined by the sound and image of a movie projector as the reel counts down from ten, featuring snippets of an erect male member, a cartoon, a child’s hands, a comedic silent ghost story, a tarantula, a bleeding slaughtered lamb, and a nail being hammered through a man’s palm before the camera takes viewers inside a hospital where a boy in a bed (Jörgen Lindström) starts reading Mikhail Lermontov’s mid-nineteenth-century book A Hero of Our Time, which the author describes as “a portrait, but not of one man only. . . . You will tell me, as you have told me before, that no man can be so bad as this; and my reply will be: ‘If you believe that such persons as the villains of tragedy and romance could exist in real life, why can you not believe in the reality of Pechorin?’ . . . Is it not because there is more truth in it than may be altogether palatable to you?” That passage relates to Bergman’s oeuvre as a whole but particularly to Persona, a film about identity, storytelling, and the medium itself.

A young boy reaches out in avant-garde Bergman masterpiece, spectacularly photographed by Sven Nykvist

Bergman muse Liv Ullmann stars as Elisabet Vogler, an actress who suddenly stops talking while onstage in the midst of a play and continues her silence as she is hospitalized in an institution. Her doctor (Margaretha Krook) is sure there is nothing seriously wrong with Elisabet, that her refraining from speech is a choice based on the horrors she sees in the world. “Reality is diabolical,” she tells her, before sending Elisabeth and Nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson) to her cottage on Fårö Island, hoping the isolation will help ease her fears. On the island, Alma opens up about her own life, particularly about sex, but as the two women grow extremely close, they are also torn apart, both by the narrative and the celluloid, which rips and burns halfway through, setting up a chilling conclusion that is part existential thriller, part ghost story, and very much a sharp, incisive look deep into the human psyche. Filmed in haunting black-and-white by Sven Nykvist and including numerous dazzling, experimental shots, Persona is a grand cinematic achievement, an intense work that expanded the boundaries of what the medium can do. In his 1990 book, Images: My Life in Film, Bergman wrote, “Today I feel that in Persona — and later in Cries and Whispers — I had gone as far as I could go. And that in these two instances, when working in total freedom, I touched wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover.” Indeed, “wordless secrets” abound in Persona, one of Bergman’s most penetrating and mesmerizing tales. Even the title holds additional meaning, as “persona,” in Latin, originally referred to the mask an actor wore that represented the character they were playing onstage. Persona is screening February 23-25 and March 1-3 and 7 in Film Forum’s Ingmar Bergman Centennial Retrospective.

POLLOCK

Jim Fletcher and Birgit Huppuch star in US premiere of Pollock at Abrons Arts Center (photo by Laurent Schneegans)

Abrons Arts Center, Underground Theater
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
February 22-25, $20
212-352-3101
www.abronsartscenter.org

Abrons Arts Center and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York have joined forces for the US premiere of Compagnie l’heliotrope’s Pollock, a riveting show about the tempestuous relationship between Abstract Expressionists Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, who met in 1942, married in 1945, and stayed together, through good and bad — primarily Pollock’s alcoholism and infidelities — until his death in a car crash in 1956. Written by Fabrice Melquiot and directed by Paul Desveaux as part of a trilogy about American artists that also includes works about Janis Joplin and Diane Arbus, Pollock unfurls like one of Pollock’s paintings, nonlinear, experimental, and abstract, forming an intense and entertaining whole. Pollock (Jim Fletcher) and Krasner (Birgit Huppuch) tramp barefoot across Desveaux’s set, which features a pair of transparent plastic canvases, a small kitchen area, and microphones at either side, where Pollock and Krasner share some of their tale. The stage is a metaphor for Pollock’s thoughts; “Jackson Pollock drags on his cigarette and now he’ll go / into / into the bar that functions as his head / Jackson Pollock’s head is a bar not a head all I serve in my bar is pure genius no ice it rips out your tonsils plucks off your uvula,” the Wyoming-born Pollock says. Brooklyn native Krasner adds, “That’s what genius is /  Pollock  / It’s on your face like a mark of shame you’d like to hide but it’s got you in its grip /  It won’t let go will never let go drink all you like Pollock you’ll never escape it  / It’s how you’re made it’s there it’s /  It’s on your face on every one of your paintings poor love my poor love and because your face lets you see where to put your feet like the paintings help you stand up straight  / You keep your beautiful face for all to see and tuck your crutches under your arm / Then your genius explodes  / You don’t wanna fall flat on your face.”

Pollock depicts the tempestuous relationship between Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner (photo by Laurent Schneegans)

The couple cuddle and argue, smoke cigarettes, drink from bottles, interview each other, dance, paint, and name-drop such friends and colleagues as Hans Hoffmann, Tony Smith, Pablo Picasso, Andre Derain, Pierre Matisse, Piet Mondrian, and Alexander Calder. They speak in poetic rhythms — the English translation is by Kenneth Casler and Myriam Heard — as they relate various aspects of their relationship, including events after Pollock’s death in a one-car accident that might have been a suicide; Pollock’s mistress at the time, Ruth Kligman, was in the car too but survived. “Painting / And killing myself / I don’t do anything else,” Pollock says. A moment later, Krasner examines a Pollock painting using mathematics and fractal density. “You’re exactly what I wasn’t expecting this evening,” he says. It’s not exactly what the audience was expecting either, but Pollock is an insightful and entertaining exploration of love and the creative process. Fletcher (Isolde, The Evening), a longtime member of Richard Maxwell’s New York City Players and who most recently played Lemmy Caution in Why Why Always at Abrons, Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty’s multimedia adaptation of Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville, inhabits Pollock’s mind, body, and spirit, giving an expert performance that is complemented by Huppuch’s (Men on Boats, Telephone) bold, beautiful portrayal of Krasner, just as Pollock was complemented by Krasner. Many of the scenes and much of the dialogue were inspired by real episodes, as Melquiot and Desveaux drip, scratch, and splatter the elements together to come up with an impressive theatrical canvas.

DAVID HOCKNEY

David Hockney, “A Bigger Splash,” acrylic on canvas, 1967 (Tate, purchased 1980 / © David Hockney; photo © Tate, London 2017)

Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Through February 25, $25 suggested admission
212-535-7710
www.metmuseum.org

There’s something very pure about the paintings of English artist David Hockney, so directly enchanting that Randall Wright’s 2015 documentary about him was simply called Hockney and the Met’s grand retrospective, which closes February 25, is titled David Hockney, no further description needed. I called the film “a wonderful documentary that celebrates not only the artist but his work and process, which comes alive on the screen, digital technology allowing the paintings and photographs to pop with their brilliant colors. If you didn’t appreciate Hockney’s talent before, this documentary will change your mind about it. And if you already were a fan of him and his work, this film will make you love him even more.” The same can be said of the Met show, including the digital aspect; the first major survey of Hockney in New York City in thirty years features the digital triptych “View through the Artist’s Bedroom Window, Bridlington” that reveals the development of a trio of images made on an iPad. Celebrating his eightieth birthday, the show comprises more than eighty painting, drawing, photographs, and video works as Hockney, over the course of nearly sixty years, goes from abstraction to realism, from portraits to landscapes, from 1960’s “Love Painting,” when he was still at the Royal College of Art, to 2017’s “Interior with Blue Terrace and Garden.”

David Hockney, “Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy,” acrylic on canvas, 1968 (private collection / © David Hockney)

David Hockney, “Man in Shower in Beverly Hills,” acrylic on canvas, 1964 (Tate, purchased 1980 / © David Hockney; photo © Tate, London 2017)

Hockney was born in Bradford, England and has lived on the Yorkshire Coast and in the Hollywood Hills. He still paints every day, with a sparkling control of color, form, and space that instantly engages viewers making their way through the galleries, divided into “Early Works,” “Los Angeles,” “Pair Portraits,” “Sketches & Photocollages,” “Assembled Views,” “Roads & Landscapes,” and “Blue Terraces.” He didn’t hide from his sexual identity in his paintings, even though homosexuality was illegal in the United Kingdom until the Sexual Offences Act of 1967. Many of his classic works are on view: 1967’s “A Bigger Splash,” a spectacularly rendered backyard pool with a small home, part of a diving board, and two tall palm trees set against a blue sky, a bravura example of his use of line and geometric shapes; 1964’s homoerotic “Man in Shower in Beverly Hills”; 1980’s swirling, mazelike “Nichols Canyon”; and 1986’s chromogenic print “Pearblossom Hwy., 11-18th April 1986, #1,” which focuses our gaze on the word “stop” three times, an instruction that we, and Hockney, have no intention of obeying.

David Hockney "Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy" 1968 Acrylic on canvas 83 1/2 x 119 1/2" © David Hockney

David Hockney, “Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy,” acrylic on canvas, 1968 (private collection / © David Hockney)

But the show goes much deeper. “One of the surprises for me is how varying he was,” curator Ian Alteveer says in a Met video. “He, at a very young age, was expressing themes of queerness and of difference and displaying them very proudly in his work.” This is perhaps best exemplified by 1963’s “Domestic Scene,” in which a nearly naked man washes the back of a fully naked man taking a shower in a bucket, and 1960’s “The Third Love Painting,” which includes a large phallic object and a quote from Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard at the Close of the Day,” among other text. Meanwhile, the gems keep coming, from such double portraits as “American Collectors (Fred and Marcia Weisman),” “Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy,” “My Parents,” and “Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy” to the Matisse/Picasso-inspired “V.N.” paintings and depictions of the Grand Canyon, art dealer John Kasmin, onetime lover Peter Schlesinger, artist Ron Kitaj, and his longtime manager and former companion Gregory Evans. You’ll leave the show feeling gleeful and chipper, ready to bask in the glow of the world outside while excitedly wondering what Hockney will come up with next.

CATS ON GLASS

Cats seek forever homes in Chelsea pop-up exhibit (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

524 West 26th St. at Tenth Ave.
February 15-19, free with advance RSVP, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.freshstep.com/cat-love
cats on glass slideshow

Fresh Step’s Cats on Glass pop-up show, continuing in Robert Miller Gallery’s Chelsea space through Presidents Day, is a sweet-natured celebration of all things feline, a tribute to our whiskered friends who essentially rule the world, all in the name of a new kitty litter. Not only are you encouraged to take lots of pictures, but if you post a photo or story on Instagram, you will receive a pair of cat sunglasses.

A giant cat surveys his territory (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The “Larger than Life” room honors the historical power of cats in “Larger than Life,” consisting of several large-scale pussies standing on small podiums so you may “Treasure the Monumental” and bow at their majesty.

Meditating to purrs is good for the soul (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Feline fanciers can take a break by sitting on a furry seat, putting on cat-ear headphones, and finding “purr-vana” in the Me-owm Meditation Room, which welcomes visitors with a neon “Meowmaste” sign and offers everyone a chance to meditate alongside an imaginary cat in their mind.

Pom Pom Room is a colorful display of cat toys (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Everyone is invited to get on all fours and “Revel in a Cat Daydream” in the Pom Pom Room, an area filled with colorful pom pom garlands and balls hanging from above and reaching toward the comfy floor carpet, where there are objects to bat at like playful kitties.

You can get a cat’s-eye view at interactive show (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

In the lobby are small cat paintings and mirrors that lead to the mane event, the Live Cats on Glass Playhouse, where you are given the opportunity to “Admire Cats from a Totally New Purr-spective.” On the walls are large-scale photographs of cats that are available for adoption. In one corner, you can put giant kitty heads on and see the world through a cat’s eyes.

Cuteness abounds at unique cat exhibition (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

But the centerpiece is the deluxe Live Cats on Glass Playhouse, a series of rooms, encased in Plexiglass, about six to seven feet off the ground, where cats can run around, play with other cats, hide in corners, and mew away. Visitors are able to walk under the structure and watch the cats from beneath, looking up at their toe beans pushed against the glass, see them being taken out of and put back into their carriers, or slightly pet them through small holes and slits.

Craig and Roberto are happy to be back together in playhouse (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Roberto was not happy until he was joined by his brother, Craig. Geisha ruled from a spot that was clearly just for him. And Twinkle wasn’t sure what to do and where to go.

Meet-and-greets with potential adoptees are available (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

And finally, people can interact with some of the animals in a separate room, with the possibility of giving one of them a forever home. Once the Chelsea exhibit ends, it is likely that Fresh Step will take the show on the road, sharing feline joy around the country.

FREE TICKET ALERT: SALONS@NATIONALACADEMY

national academy salons

Who: Judith Bernstein, Mickalene Thomas, Odili Donald Odita, David Reed
What: Conversations between National Academicians
Where: National Academy of Design, 5 East 89th St. at Fifth Ave., 212-369-4880
When: Thursday, March 15 & 29, free with advance RSVP, 6:30
Why: Exhibits and classes at the National Academy of Design, situated in the Huntington Mansion on Eighty-Ninth St. and Fifth Ave., have been on hiatus as the institution seeks to sell its buildings and find a new home. But the organization, which was founded in 1825 to promote the fine arts in America, is still hosting special programs. In March, the salons@nationalacademy series continues with what should be two fascinating conversations between National Academicians. On March 15 at 6:30, two New Jersey natives who live and work in New York, Judith Bernstein, known for her explicit sexual imagery, and Mickalene Thomas, a multimedia artist who explores feminine desire and power through glittering works, will get together for a conversation that has the potential to be explosive given what is happening in the country today and in the art world specifically. Two weeks later, on March 29 at 6:30, California multimedia artist, lecturer, historian, and curator David Reed will be joined by Nigerian-born abstract painter Odili Donald Odita, who lives and works in Philadelphia and specializes in large-scale, ornately colorful wall installations. Admission is free, but there is limited seating, so advance reservations are strongly suggested.

OSCILLOSCOPE AT 10: AFTER TILLER / EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT

Dr. Susan Robinson has to make difficult choices when deciding whether to perform a late abortion

AFTER TILLER (Martha Shane & Lana Wilson, 2013)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Monday, February 19, $15, 7:00
Series runs February 19-22
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
www.aftertillermovie.com

BAMcinématek celebrates the tenth anniversary of Oscilloscope Laboratories, the independent studio founded by Beastie Boy Adam Yauch in 2008, with five days of films that are representative of its dedication to quality and diversity, screening February 19-22. The series begins on February 19 at 7:00 with After Tiller, in which directors and producers Martha Shane and Lana Wilson manage to humanize one of the most contentious, controversial, and complicated issues of our age: late abortion. In May 2009, Dr. George Tiller, who specialized in third-trimester abortions, was assassinated in front of his clinic in Wichita, Kansas. That left only four doctors in the United States who performed late abortions, each of whom had either trained or worked with Dr. Tiller. “It was absolutely no question in any of our minds that we were going to keep on doing his work,” one of those four doctors, Susan Robinson, says in the film. As After Tiller begins, Dr. Robinson works with Dr. Shelley Sella at Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Dr. LeRoy Carhart is a former U.S. Air Force colonel who operates the Abortion & Contraception Clinic of Nebraska, and Dr. Warren Hern is director of the Boulder Abortion Clinic in Colorado. Shane and Wilson follow these four dedicated doctors who continue doing their work despite the personal danger associated with their profession, including harassment, murder, assault, and bombings. “When I walk out the door, I expect to be assassinated,” Dr. Hern says. The filmmakers show the doctors in their offices, meeting with women who are requesting late abortions for various reasons; Shane and Wilson also follow the abortion providers into their homes as they go on with their daily lives, offering an intimate portrait of these men and women who are so often called monsters but are firm in their belief that what they are doing is important and absolutely necessary, performing their jobs with care and understanding. However, Dr. Hern wonders if he should stop providing late abortions and just settle down peacefully with his new wife and adopted son, while Dr. Carhart and his wife opt to move out of Nebraska after a law change and meet resistance as they try to move their clinic to Maryland or Virginia.

Dr. Warren Hern is one of only four doctors in America who provides late abortions

The film also reveals that deciding to perform a late abortion is often an extremely difficult choice for the doctors as well as the patients and not something the providers do automatically when a woman comes to them. One of the most compelling scenes occurs when Drs. Sella and Robinson have a heart-wrenching disagreement over whether to proceed with a late abortion for a young woman, evaluating whether her reason is valid enough and lamenting that the ability of the woman to tell her story could affect the final decision. It’s a pivotal moment that also brings into focus the concerns of the American people; while less than one percent of the abortions performed in the country occur in the third trimester, the procedure is often the centerpiece of the antiabortion movement, but even pro-choice supporters will find themselves questioning the efficacy of all late abortions. The women come to the doctors for many reasons, ranging from the health of the child to economic situations to admitting that they either didn’t know or refused to accept that they were pregnant until it was too late. “It’s guilt no matter which way you go,” one desperate patient, whose child would be born with severe disabilities and would likely die within a year, tells Dr. Sella. “Guilt if you go ahead and do what we’re doing, or bring him into this world and then he doesn’t have any quality of life.” Although Shane and Wilson include footage of protestors, news reports, and congressional hearings, After Tiller is a powerful, deeply emotional documentary about the doctors and patients who must make impossible choices and live with their decisions for the rest of their lives. The BAM screening of the film — which raises fascinating, difficult questions for which there are no easy answers — will be followed by a panel discussion with Lady Parts Justice League founder Lizz Winstead, Planned Parenthood of New York City general counsel Meg Barnette, and executive producer Diane Max, moderated by Obvious Child cowriter and producer Elisabeth Holm. “Oscilloscope at Ten” continues through February 22 with Andrew Dosunmu’s Mother of George, Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent, Diego Echeverria’s Los Sures, and a double feature of Yauch’s Awesome; I Fuckin’ Shot That! and Fight for Your Right Revisited.

Embrace of the Serpent takes viewers on an extraordinary journey into the heart of darkness and beyond

EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT (EL ABRAZO DE LA SERPIENTE) (Ciro Guerra, 2015)
Wednesday, February 21, $15, 9:00
www.bam.org
embraceoftheserpent.oscilloscope.net

Colombian writer-director Ciro Guerra takes viewers on a spectacular journey through time and space and deep into the heart of darkness in the extraordinary Embrace of the Serpent. Guerra’s Oscar-nominated film, the first to be shot in the Colombian Amazon in thirty years, opens with a 1909 quote from explorer Theodor Koch-Grünberg: “It is not possible for me to know if the infinite jungle has started on me the process that has taken many others to complete and irremediable insanity.” Inspired by the real-life journals of Koch-Grünberg and botanist and explorer Richard Evans Schultes, Guerra poetically shifts back and forth between two similar trips down the Vaupés River, both led by the same Amazonian shaman, each time guiding a white scientist on a perilous expedition in a long, narrow canoe. Shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, ailing white ethnologist Theo (Jan Bijvoet) and his native aid, Manduca (Yauenkü Migue), seek the help of Karamakate (Nilbio Torres), a shaman wholly suspicious of whites and who believes he is the last of his tribe. However, Theo claims he knows where remnants of Karamakate’s people live and will show him in return for helping him find the magical and mysterious hallucinogenic Yakruna plant that Theo thinks can cure his illness. Forty years later, white botanist Evan (Brionne Davis) enlists Karamakate (Antonio Bolívar Salvador) to locate what is thought to be the last surviving Yakruna plant, which he hopes will finally allow him to dream in order to heal his soul. Evoking such films as Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Embrace of the Serpent makes the rainforest itself a character, shot in glorious black-and-white by David Gallego (Cecilia, Violencia) in a sparkling palette reminiscent of the work of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. As the parallel stories continue, the men encounter similar locations that have changed dramatically over time, largely as a result of rubber barons descending on the forest and white missionaries bringing Western religion to the natives. It’s difficult to watch without being assailed by imperialist concepts of the “noble savage,” mainly because the Amazon — and our Western minds — have been so profoundly affected by those ideas. “Before he can become a warrior, a man has to leave everything behind and go into the jungle, guided only by his dreams,” the older Karamakate says. “In that journey he has to discover, completely alone, who he really is.”

Guide Karamakate (Antonio Bolívar Salvador) and botanist Evan (Brionne Davis) explore dreams in Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent

Winner of the Directors’ Fortnight Art Cinema Award at the Cannes Film Festival and nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, Embrace of the Serpent is an unforgettable spiritual quest into the ravages of colonialism, the evils of materialism, the end of indigenous cultures, and what should be a sacred relationship between humanity and nature. Written by Guerra (2004’s Wandering Shadows, 2009’s The Wind Journeys) and Jacques Toulemonde (Anna), it is told from the point of view of the indigenous people of the Amazon, whom Guerra worked closely with in the making of the film, assuring them of his intentions to not exploit them the way so many others have. Aside from the Belgian Bijvoet and the Texan Davis, the rest of the cast is made up of members of tribes that live along the Vaupés. Guerra actually brought along a shaman known as a payé to perform ritual ceremonies to ensure the safety of the cast and crew and to protect the jungle itself. “What Ciro is doing with this film is an homage to the memory of our elders, in the time before: the way the white men treated the natives, the rubber exploitation,” Torres, in his first movie, says about the film. “I’ve asked the elders how it was and it is as seen in the film; that’s why we decided to support it. For the elders and myself it is a memory of the ancestors and their knowledge.” Salvador, who previously had bad experiences with filmmakers, notes, “It is a film that shows the Amazon, the lungs of the world, the greater purifying filter, and the most valuable of indigenous cultures. That is its greatest achievement.” Embrace of the Serpent is a great achievement indeed, an honest, humanistic, maddening journey that takes you places you’ve never been. Embrace of the Serpent is screening February 21 in the BAMcinématek series “Oscilloscope at Ten.”

INGMAR BERGMAN CENTENNIAL RETROSPECTIVE: THE MAGICIAN

A traveling troupe of illusionists is forced to defend itself in Ingmar Bergman’s The Magician

THE MAGICIAN (ANSIKTET) (Ingmar Bergman, 1958)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Friday, February 16, 2:00, 6:00, 10:00; Saturday, February 17, 4:20, 8:15; Sunday, March 4, 12:30
Series runs February 7 – March 15
212-727-8110
filmforum.org

Film Forum’s Ingmar Bergman Centennial Retrospective continues with Bergman’s darkly comic 1958 film The Magician, one of the Swedish auteur’s lesser-known, underrated masterpieces, an intense yet funny, and fun, work about art, science, faith, death, and the power of the movies themselves. When Vogler’s Magnetic Health Theater comes to town, the local triumvirate of Dr. Vergérus (Gunnar Björnstrand), police commissioner Starbeck (Toivo Pawlo), and Consul Egerman (Erland Josephson) brings the traveling troupe in for questioning, forcing them to spend the night as guests in Egerman’s home. The three men seek to prove that mesmerist Albert Emanuel Vogler (Max von Sydow), his assistant, Mr. Aman (Ingrid Thulin), a witchy grandmother (Naima Wifstrand), and their promoter, Tubal (Åke Fridell), are a bunch of frauds. The interrogations delve into such Bergmanesque topics as science vs. reason, good vs. evil, life and death, and the existence of God. As various potions are dispensed to and tricks played on a staff that includes maid Sara (Bibi Andersson), cook Sofia Garp (Sif Ruud), and stableman Antonsson (Oscar Ljung) in addition to Starbeck’s wife (Ulla Sjöblom) and Egerman’s spouse (Gertrud Fridh), a series of romantic rendezvous take place, along with some genuine horror, leading to a thrillingly ambiguous ending.

Max von Sydow is mesmerizing as mesmerist and Ingmar Bergman alter ego Albert Emanuel Vogler in The Magician

Von Sydow is mesmerizing as the mesmerist, a silent, brooding man in a sharp beard and mustache, his penetrating eyes a character all their own. (The original title of the film is Ansiktet, which means “Face.”) His showdowns with Dr. Vergerus serve as Bergman’s defense of the art of film itself, an illusion of light and shadow and suspension of belief. Meanwhile, Tubal and wandering drunk Johan Spegel (Bengt Ekerot) add comic relief and a needed level of absurdity to the serious proceedings. The film is superbly shot in black-and-white by cinematographer Gunnar Fischer, maintaining an appropriately creepy and mysterious look throughout. It also introduces character names into Bergman’s canon, appellations such as Vogler, Vergérus, and Egerman, that will show up again in such future works as Persona (with Liv Ullmann as actress Elisabet Vogler, who has stopped speaking, and Björnstrand as Mr. Vogler), Hour of the Wolf (with Thulin as Veronica Vogler, a former lover haunting von Sydow’s painter Johan Borg), Fanny and Alexander (with Jan Malmsjö as Bishop Edvard Vergérus), and After the Rehearsal (with Josephson as theater director Henrik Vogler and Lena Olin as actress Anna Egerman). Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 1959 Venice Film Festival, The Magician is screening February 16-17 and March 4 in Film Forum’s fab Bergman series, which keeps providing magic through March 15 with such other treasures as Shame, Persona, The Virgin Spring, Smiles of a Summer Night, The Passion of Anna, and The Touch (with Elliott Gould!).