Beyond the megalomania and the barely retained breath of madness of Werner Herzog’s two epics which take place in the South American jungle, “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” and “Fitzcarraldo,” there is a portion of quasi-documentary observation of the natural and social ecosystems that Amazon gave birth to along its path. “Veins of the Amazon” can be seen as an antidote to the wave of fiction which was already drowning out the documentary impulse in the German director’s movies. The entire film is dedicated to the capturing of the fratricidal, thus tragic, fight between man and nature. The former tries either to enslave or to make the latter his ally, thinking only about his own survival at all times. Nature remains impassible and this indifference is nowhere more visible than in the imperturbable flow of Amazon’s brownish waters; at the same time, though, it doesn’t fail to return to him the poison he discharged. At the heart of the movie lie the trade exchanges which emerge along Amazon and, especially, on board the ships which connect otherwise inaccessible places; without formulating any explicit commentary, the camera records the show described by the brutalizing work, by the wet, poorly-fed, poorly-dressed bodies surrounded by islands of garbage which seem to act without any glimmer of aliveness or self-awareness. The result is a hypnotic experience and an eloquent picture of the inseparable link between environmental and human degradation. (Liri Alienor Chapelan)