Culture
Now Playing: When Worlds Collide: three excellent films about colonialist , conquerors, and Indigenous communities
By: Gordon Briggs
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While some films have glorified the exploration of the Americas, the recent film Magellan is one in a series of films that depict the conquest of the Americas and the genocide of indigenous communities. These films range from sweeping romances to psychedelic explorations into the jungles of Central America. Here are three excellent historical films about explorers and their interactions with indigenous communities.
Aguirre, the Wrath of God is a film I hold in the highest regard. Right from its stunning opening shot of a group of explorers snaking along the edge of a mountain, to its haunting final shot of a raft infested with monkeys, the film was the first to transport me to an entirely different time and place. Here, in a production that has become the stuff of legend, director Werner Herzog and his crew ventured into the Peruvian rainforest to tell the story of a Spanish expedition led by a madman in search of the Lost City of Gold. However, we know no such city exists, and this expedition is floating towards its doom. There’s plenty to praise here: the score is eerie, the mood is dreamlike, and consumed by madness and spouting sermons about conquest, Klaus Kinski is a force of nature playing the demented conquistador hopelessly lost in the jungle. Best of all is the film’s use of the landscape. Watching these men slowly consumed by the jungle, we realize how insignificant we are in the eyes of nature. ★★★★
Upon its initial release it made some audiences snore and some critics scoff, but I don’t care, I believe The New World is f*cking beautiful. Right from its striking opening sequence, where the arrival of European ships is scored to Wagner, to that beautiful ending where Pocahontas is playing in the garden with her son, this movie draws me in with its ravishing imagery and ethereal soundscape. There’s a tactility to this work. Watching it, you get a sense of how the world feels against your skin. You could enjoy this one as a love story between Pocahontas and John Smith. However, I enjoy the film more as a meditation on memory, grace, and how we choose to live in the natural world. Better still, in a genre that has traditionally favored the perspective of European explorers, this film further distinguishes itself by having Pocahontas become a traveler who ventures to the ‘New World’ of England. For my money, it’s one of the highlights of the 2000s. ★ ★ ★ ★
I love this one. All the movies I watch, all the TV I binge, in the end, I’m just looking for something different, and Embrace the Serpent was something different. Set deep in the jungles of the Amazon, Serpent tells the story of a Colombian shaman and a white explorer searching for an elusive psychedelic plant. Rather than taking the traditional route and showing the Amazon through the eyes of European explorers, Serpent emphasizes what happens over generations after a remote place is ‘discovered’. Specifically, the movie highlights the environmental and psychological fallout from the region’s rubber industry. By taking us to a place most men, not to mention most movies, dare not go, we get a mind-altering adventure film that ruminates on the nature of time, the history of colonialism, and the belief in a higher power. It all culminates in a psychedelic drug trip sequence that feels like Aguirre, the Wrath of God meets the climax of 2001.★ ★ ★ ★