I liked the idea of this film. It sounded cool and fun. Something I might have liked to have done years ago (and maybe part of me still would).
I'm not going to comment on the acting or cinematography - it was all good from my humble perspective. Certainly the characters were believable and realistic.
This film is about the characters. However the story that holds the film together is, as you will know, about a young American male (named Jamie) who is in Chile - most likely, based on his persona in the film, with a primary aim of sampling the San Pedro cactus and the hallucinogenic substance mescaline which it contains. He appears to have a friend who is from the area, who is his link to the country, as he speaks no Spanish himself. We are not sure if he is visiting his friend, or if he is living or studying in the country. Either way, he goes off on his spiritual quest with his friend, his friend's 2 brothers and a girl whom he spontaneously invited while high at a party.
The main character is incredibly insensitive throughout. At the start of the movie, it seems that he regretted inviting the girl when setting off with his friends, and rather callously states that they can just leave her behind if she starts to annoy them.
As they progress on their journey in travelling to a town to get the cactus, moving on to their chosen spot to prepare and imbibe the cactus, experience the effects of it and come down again, their characters are explored. From the start, the main character made me cringe. I think it might be because I could see some aspects of myself from the past in him, which I did not like. He was quite insensitive with a somewhat superior attitude towards others, and was more interested in pursuing with his goal rather than getting to know people on the way. Actually he almost seemed desperate with his goal of taking mescaline. The irony is that he appears to have gained his knowledge (at least of mescaline) from reading Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception" (a typical read for the Western teenage drug-user and bedroom philosopher).
In the movie he is driven by his desire to sample this cactus, and is quite insulting towards others on the way. A key scene to highlight this is when a lady invites them into her home to see if she wants to give them some of her cactus, and the main character (Jamie) sneaks into her garden, cuts off a portion of the cactus, puts it in their car and then returns, telling his friends it's time to go. Although his friends appeared to laugh when they saw the cactus in the back of the car and perhaps appreciated his initiative, it probably added to their feeling of him being an "asshole", which they only call him when he is rude towards their female travelling companion, Crystal Fairy.
The actual drug-taking sequence is interesting from a preparation point of view. In terms of the drug effects, when Jamie begins to appear to experience heightened levels of anxiety and paranoia, there is a feeling of him deserving this and a hope that perhaps the experience will teach the viewer why he is the way he is, and that it will make him a better person. This doesn't really happen however.
A key difference between Jamie and the Crystal Fairy is her new age/spiritual attitude versus his perhaps more typical attitude of a well-off white rather naive indelicate Western male. I disagree with the previous reviewer who stated that they were both equally phony, with Crystal Fairy spouting clichés and being a caricature of a hippy. As least she is following a path in life that she seems to believe in, and seems friendly and respectful towards others. I agree that Jamie seems phony, though I don't think he is deliberately so. He is rather narrowed in his views and self-centred. His understanding of certain topics seems superficial and gleaned from books. He quickly stands out from his friends for being more forward, less relaxed and less "cool", and perhaps somewhat socially inept and missing the subtleties of communication.
Crystal Fairy, on the other hand, might be a little more deliberate in creating her hippie-esque persona. We only really see this at the end, when she informs the group as they are sitting round the campfire on their comedown, that she was raped whilst at a party some time in the past. She also adds that she is a dominatrix. This leaves the viewer wondering if these things are connected, and that perhaps her hippie portrayal is some kind of reaction against what happened.
Anyway, back to the title of my review. When the film was over, I kind of felt that I wasn't left satisfied by the film. The end is perhaps slightly squeezed in and anti-climatic. Sure, Jamie and Crystal Fairy kiss and make up - there's a surprise - could see that coming a mile off. There wasn't a huge focus on the drug experience itself - the viewer simply follows them from the outside. I suppose I was disappointed that the characters weren't changed in a more significant way than they were - or, more specifically, Jamie. His brief moment of enlightenment where he apologises to Crystal Fairy and then cries after her sorry story seems rather superficial and short- lived. This point is driven home by one of the closing line of the movie, spoken by Jamie - "she didn't see any faces in the mountain". This appeared to be spoken with some deeper meaning, though I struggle to see what it is. Perhaps someone else can enlighten me.
Watch the film.
I'm not going to comment on the acting or cinematography - it was all good from my humble perspective. Certainly the characters were believable and realistic.
This film is about the characters. However the story that holds the film together is, as you will know, about a young American male (named Jamie) who is in Chile - most likely, based on his persona in the film, with a primary aim of sampling the San Pedro cactus and the hallucinogenic substance mescaline which it contains. He appears to have a friend who is from the area, who is his link to the country, as he speaks no Spanish himself. We are not sure if he is visiting his friend, or if he is living or studying in the country. Either way, he goes off on his spiritual quest with his friend, his friend's 2 brothers and a girl whom he spontaneously invited while high at a party.
The main character is incredibly insensitive throughout. At the start of the movie, it seems that he regretted inviting the girl when setting off with his friends, and rather callously states that they can just leave her behind if she starts to annoy them.
As they progress on their journey in travelling to a town to get the cactus, moving on to their chosen spot to prepare and imbibe the cactus, experience the effects of it and come down again, their characters are explored. From the start, the main character made me cringe. I think it might be because I could see some aspects of myself from the past in him, which I did not like. He was quite insensitive with a somewhat superior attitude towards others, and was more interested in pursuing with his goal rather than getting to know people on the way. Actually he almost seemed desperate with his goal of taking mescaline. The irony is that he appears to have gained his knowledge (at least of mescaline) from reading Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception" (a typical read for the Western teenage drug-user and bedroom philosopher).
In the movie he is driven by his desire to sample this cactus, and is quite insulting towards others on the way. A key scene to highlight this is when a lady invites them into her home to see if she wants to give them some of her cactus, and the main character (Jamie) sneaks into her garden, cuts off a portion of the cactus, puts it in their car and then returns, telling his friends it's time to go. Although his friends appeared to laugh when they saw the cactus in the back of the car and perhaps appreciated his initiative, it probably added to their feeling of him being an "asshole", which they only call him when he is rude towards their female travelling companion, Crystal Fairy.
The actual drug-taking sequence is interesting from a preparation point of view. In terms of the drug effects, when Jamie begins to appear to experience heightened levels of anxiety and paranoia, there is a feeling of him deserving this and a hope that perhaps the experience will teach the viewer why he is the way he is, and that it will make him a better person. This doesn't really happen however.
A key difference between Jamie and the Crystal Fairy is her new age/spiritual attitude versus his perhaps more typical attitude of a well-off white rather naive indelicate Western male. I disagree with the previous reviewer who stated that they were both equally phony, with Crystal Fairy spouting clichés and being a caricature of a hippy. As least she is following a path in life that she seems to believe in, and seems friendly and respectful towards others. I agree that Jamie seems phony, though I don't think he is deliberately so. He is rather narrowed in his views and self-centred. His understanding of certain topics seems superficial and gleaned from books. He quickly stands out from his friends for being more forward, less relaxed and less "cool", and perhaps somewhat socially inept and missing the subtleties of communication.
Crystal Fairy, on the other hand, might be a little more deliberate in creating her hippie-esque persona. We only really see this at the end, when she informs the group as they are sitting round the campfire on their comedown, that she was raped whilst at a party some time in the past. She also adds that she is a dominatrix. This leaves the viewer wondering if these things are connected, and that perhaps her hippie portrayal is some kind of reaction against what happened.
Anyway, back to the title of my review. When the film was over, I kind of felt that I wasn't left satisfied by the film. The end is perhaps slightly squeezed in and anti-climatic. Sure, Jamie and Crystal Fairy kiss and make up - there's a surprise - could see that coming a mile off. There wasn't a huge focus on the drug experience itself - the viewer simply follows them from the outside. I suppose I was disappointed that the characters weren't changed in a more significant way than they were - or, more specifically, Jamie. His brief moment of enlightenment where he apologises to Crystal Fairy and then cries after her sorry story seems rather superficial and short- lived. This point is driven home by one of the closing line of the movie, spoken by Jamie - "she didn't see any faces in the mountain". This appeared to be spoken with some deeper meaning, though I struggle to see what it is. Perhaps someone else can enlighten me.
Watch the film.