Pepe puts James through several months of purification dieting and ritual isolation.Eventually Pepe brews the Ayahuasca and James partakes. Cue the hallucination scenes from Natural Born Killers and Altered States. James speaks of communing with the spirit of Ayahuasca herself and seeing purgative visions of the bad juju in his life. And so on.
The movie itself is well made, beautiful to look at, the soundtrack is good. A spin through the list of executive producers reveals that Leonardo DiCaprio was involved so the effort had some Hollywood juice, even though Degan did fund it at least partially through Kickstarter.
After months of treatment and a ritual symbolic death, burial, and resurrection, James comes back to life. He sings. He plays with children and dogs. He notices women. He smiles. He hangs out relaxing with Pepe. His experience brought him some relief though he is clear when he arrives back home that he thinks he’s still sick and will need to continue some form of treatment.
This point is crucial. The worst thing that could happen would be someone who is authentically unwell watching the film and beginning to wonder whether the cure is in the jungle and then shuns treatment in favor of that vision quest. There’s much to be learned in the jungle about the land, the people, about yourself, and perhaps even about Ayahuasca but it is not a replacement for treatment.
The last time we see Pepe he’s been banished from his village because he wasn’t charging people for his treatments and he had to move back to the city and get a job. He’s covered in motor oil and grime, apparently miserable, wrangling a car transmission in a parts shop. Pepe is caught now in the industrial nightmare of the romantic perspective: to see no beauty or elegance in the precision gearworks of that particular machine. The transmission is the perfect metaphor for the clash between the classic and romantic.
This could have been a great film if Degan had focused on that dichotomy and not just served up propaganda targeted at the credulous seeker.
The Last Shaman (2017) Written and Directed by Raz Degan. Starring James Freeman.
5 out of 10
yep re: “ZEN…,” a roommate handed it to me (? -’87) & after reading a few paragraphs I realized I wasn’t breathing… few yrs latter same happened when handed “Whispering Winds of Change”- Stuart Wilde… &may have had the final breath- taker at thedivinesecretgarden.com
Thanks for mentioning Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I hear it is a tough read but a good one (they say only about a third of readers finish it entirely).
There is beauty in the “scientific”, or the classic, clearly. And, yes, one does not have to run to the jungles of Peru to find a sense of fulfillment once again in life. That is something I can agree with. However, I have to disagree with you in that I believe this film did something a little different in its portrayal of ayahuasca and the journey of the human spirit.
James, a rather privileged white man lived in the city of Boston known for its “exceptional” psychiatric facilities. Even his own father in the film acknowledged this fact and for some reason its “treatments” and facilities STILL failed his own son. Should we anticipate a clearly romantic view on life as the cure to all of our issues? Absolutely not. Should we acknowledge that there is a pressure to live up to standards of “success” that tend to put a lot of people in this society under forms of great distress? Yes. And can we learn from the simplicity of people who live with next to nothing materially in comparison to those of the West and instead closer to the lungs of our Earth–whom tend to feel a greater sense of satisfaction and purpose without years of academia behind their belt?
Those are the questions one must ponder. Art is important. And, regardless if Degans tended to be “too romantic” with this film, at least he portrayed the extreme on the opposite side of spectrum of what we worship here in the West.
Your review is exactly the problem with western society. No one needs pills for anything, period. Showing the jungle life is exactly how those people have survived and thrived for centuries without the bullshit we put upon each other here.
The worst thing a sick oerson could do is read your review and NOT go into the jungle for help. You say he’s sick but nearly everyone working 9 to 5 then watching 4 hours of tv a day is SICK. But take the pills and you’ll feel good while watching the mindless television.
The film was skeptical enough as if you watch the DMT documentary (the element in Ayahuasca) then you hear the more far out theories about literally leaving your body and encountering entities across the universe. What James experience was so realistic and rational and simple for an open mind to accept that there is no need to a critique questioning everything that happens in the film.
Furthermore it’s also sickening that such review can alter ones approach to the movie even after seeing it. I wish I could unread your review and bask more in the glory of the film.
Sincerely,
Future Ayahuasca User (and celebrity)
TY for saying