Keep the River On Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale
David Shapiro & Laurie Gwen Shapiro
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Plot Summary
This documentary tells the amazing story of 78-year old Tobias Schneebaum. A seemingly mild-mannered elderly Jewish New Yorker, Tobias is actually one of the most fearless adventurers of our time. On one hand he is a shy, gay art historian, giving colorful lectures on primitive art and culture to Barnard students and wealthy travelers on cruise ships. On the other, he's a squeamish man who once called on neighbor Norman Mailer to dispose of a dead mouse. Why would such a man walk alone into the jungle to join headhunters and cannibals, become adopted into their tribe, study - and quite willingly participate -- in their unique sexual practices, and even go so far as to join them in a meal of human flesh? This film follows Tobias's life across the decades and continents. Along the way we meet many of the people in Tobias's life including Mailer and the young author Rick Whitaker. From a supermarket in downtown New York to the heart of the Peruvian jungle, from a luxurious cruise ship bound for Indonesia to the Coney Island subway, Keep The River On Your Right deftly reconstructs Tobias's long, strange trip to find out...why? This film won the Truer Than Fiction Award at the 2001 Independent Spirit Awards.
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Rotten Tomatoes Movie Reviews
TOMATOMETER
78%- Reviews Counted: 50
- Fresh: 39
- Rotten: 11
- Average Rating: 6.7/10
Top Critics' Reviews
Fresh: An engaging and colorful but somewhat overbalanced documentary.
Fresh: Meanders, dawdles, doubles back on itself but finally gets us somewhere fascinating and worthwhile.
Fresh: It's worth seeing simply to make the acquaintance of Tobias, a really extraordinary old guy.
Rotten: Rather than observe events as they happen, the filmmakers force things, manipulating Schneebaum and the audience to serve their agenda.
Customer Reviews
Truer than Fiction.
This movie is worth watching. For all the movies you have seen that have romanticized native peoples, this one makes up for them. Tobias Schneebaum travels with a camera crew to Asmat in Indonesia and then to Peru. He lived in each place in the 50s or 60s. In Peru, he ate human flesh. He did so when he was taken, much to his surprise, he says, on a raid with the Peruvian tribe he was living with. He is an academic and was studying these people. I was puzzled by his seeming lack of direction and haphazard travels. We (nor he) ever seem to learn what he was actually trying to accomplish. At the time the film was made he was 73. The footage of him on talk shows discussing his travels, when he was in his 40s, provides some helpful insight. That fact that Mr. Schneebaum is also gay, complicates the story nicely. He often sleeps with the men he is studying...a most controversial aspect of his "investigations," higher on my list of controversies than the alleged cannibalism---rich white, westerner goes to remote places and hooks up with impoverished native people. Hmm. For all my doubts about the film (Watching him as a lecturer on a cruise ship, taking tourists ashore to native villages to watch circumcisions is too, too, too excruciating…with their cameras rolling, clicking, all dressed in there special travel wear and gear. Awful.), it is a good story about an interesting, thoughtful man, who prevails, despite his fussiness and fears. Best of all, there is his amazing journey back to these places, film crew urging him on, that is intriguing.
Good Documentary Bad Syncing
The documentary was great, it kept you on your seat. Well worth watching and paying for, but the issue came in when i tried to load it into my ipod video. It just wouldnt happen, i kept on checking it and syncing it to my ipod but it just wouldnt go, so i would advise you if your going to watch the movie, plan on watching it in front of the computer and not the tv or your ipod. Maybe think about renting it instead of buying so you dont have to deal with the hassle and you can save some money too.
YOU FOUND IT.
AN AMAZING DOCUMENTARY FOR ANYONE INTERESTED IN PEOPLE AND LIFE. TOBIAS' IS AN ENCOURAGING STORY ABOUT FOLLOWING ONE'S HEART: THIS, COUPLED WITH A DISCOURAGING PORTRAIT OF GLOBALIZATIONS EFFECT ON DIVERSE CULTURES.
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