ICAROS: A VISION
Starring Ana Cecilia Stieglitz. In English and Spanish, with English subtitles
Even given the almost boundless capabilities 2 of the medium, it has been notoriously difficult for cinema to portray the psychedelic experience. The mesmerizing Icaros: A Vision is almost in a category of its own. As a shaman says early on, advising someone about to take psychedelics for the first time, “You need to have a single intention; otherwise the spirits get confused.”
The adviser (Guillermo Arévalo) is an Andean shaman from the Shipibo tribe, and the advisee is Mexican-american Angelina (Ana Cecilia Stieglitz), in Peru for a last-ditch attempt to stave off her spreading cancer. The doclike feature’s title refers to songs intoned by the shaman to calm the fears of his guests, or “passengers”, as he calls them.
This retreat specializes in ayahuasca treatments (all guests get their own brightly coloured vomit pails), and Angelina is fearful of the drug until she connects with the shaman’s disciple, Arturo (Arturo Izquierdo). The younger man has his own problems, and envisions his diminishing eyesight as an encroaching web of intersecting lines. These reflect the geometric indigenous art of the region, where Fitzcarraldo was shot. In fact, a scene from that Werner Herzog classic is glimpsed, refracted through a hotel pool.
Such trippily disorienting effects are found alongside intense close-ups of jungle creatures, beautifully composed scenes of local lushness and deforestation, and sterile images of Angelina’s MRI machine back in the States. These foretell bigger jolts, including flash-cut memories, animated medical footage, and—well, there’s that one guy with a cloven hoof instead of a foot. At one point, Arturo looks around the hut where all the passengers gather for treatment, and sees old-fashioned TVS on their mattresses,
each depicting different concerns.
Some effects are better than others, and most passengers are barely defined. (One is an Italian actor, played by Filippo Timi, trying to overcome a bad stutter.) The film’s structure is also so constrained, it’s hard to tell if the elegantly graceful Stieglitz can really act. These wideranging concerns are mitigated by the singularity of intention (as the man said) demonstrated by artist turned writer-director Leonor Caraballo, capturing some of her own psychotropical experiences. She died of breast cancer before completing the multinational production, which was then finished by codirector Matteo Norzi and Caraballo’s husband, producer Abou Farman. The 90-minute movie reaches for the ineffable, and is downright lysergic in how much it gets right.