Amazonia: Healing with Sacred Plants

The “sacred plants” in the documentary Amazonia are ayahuasca, a powerful hallucinogenic made from a South American vine, and chacruna, whose leaves are ritually brewed with ayahuasca to make a foul-tasting concoction that induces a psychedelic effect akin to that of LSD. People venture from all over the world to Peru's Madre de Dios River in the Amazon watershed to partake of ayahuasca. Here, travelers—hailing from the U.S., Chile, Germany, and Sweden—rapturously offer their observations: “It's deep healing, very deep work here in the Amazon,” says a Swedish woman, who at one point is seen hugging a tree. While the subject is interesting, the presentation is scattershot: no introduction sets the stage; narrator Alberto Villoldo, a psychologist and medical anthropologist, simply starts talking about the experience of taking ayahuasca without describing the medicine itself, along the way touching on the “four steps of initiation” and the “nine levels of consciousness,” as well as tangential topics including the fear of death. Director Miguel Heded Abraham intersperses handsome shots of the jungle, exotic birds, animals, and the river itself with interviews of the participants and some medical experts—as well as hazy images of people taking cups of ayahuasca from the hands of a shaman—but while those with prior knowledge of ayahuasca might gain some additional insight here, others are likely to find this confusing. An optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (F. Gardner)