A Return to One Man’s Heart of Darkness

Like the flowing water it takes its name from, the documentary “Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale” meanders, dawdles, doubles back on itself but finally gets us somewhere fascinating and worthwhile.

That journey also reflects the nonlinear life of its subject, 78-year-old Tobias Schneebaum, a dapper Manhattan resident who immersed himself in two different indigenous cultures, one in Peru and one in New Guinea, that were united in their taste for warfare and cannibalism and their acceptance of men loving men.

“I like to put myself into positions where I become part of the landscape,” the elfin, articulate, slightly querulous Schneebaum tells the brother and sister co-directing team of David Shapiro and Laurie Gwen Shapiro. These cultures spoke to him so directly that Schneebaum is contemptuous of the designation “going native,” feeling quite passionately that he’d moved to a more, not less, civilized world.

Because the cannibalism Schneebaum encountered and briefly participated in in Peru is simultaneously the film’s hottest topic yet only a small part of its story, “Keep the River” starts with numerous references to it but then confusingly jumps into a major section on New Guinea without even letting us know Schneebaum had been there as well.

This kind of discursiveness also means that the film seems padded at its 93-minute feature length. All manner of scenes that could just as well have been cut, from Schneebaum shopping in his local supermarket to watching him eat a hot dog in Coney Island to graphic shots that show us perhaps more than we need to see of a ritual circumcision make the film frustratingly aimless.

The reason for the frustration is that Schneebaum’s experiences, once you sort them out and organize them yourself, are quite gripping and involving, especially his trip back to Peru (detailed in the film’s final half-hour) to confront the demons of a 45-year-old raiding party that ended in killings that were at least as traumatic as the cannibalism.

Though the film treats it last, it was Peru Schneebaum went to first. He was a reasonably established New York painter, a neighbor and acquaintance of Norman Mailer (who delivers an on-camera encomium) when photos he saw of the ruins at Machu Picchu inspired him to first get a Fulbright to study in Peru and then walk off into the jungle (“keep the river on your right” was his only direction) in search of a remote tribe called the Amarakaire.

Schneebaum lived happily with the tribe for seven months, but the deaths on that raid as much as the flesh eating so disoriented him that he returned to New York but could not take up painting again. “I felt hollow,” he explains. “I kind of died somewhere along the way.”

It was not until 15 years later that Schneebaum wrote about his experiences in a well-received book (“They Didn’t Eat Him But They Loved Him” ran the New York Times review subhead) that is still in print. That led to appearances on talk shows with hosts Mike Douglas and Charlie Rose, clips of which enliven the film.

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After Peru, Schneebaum got intrigued with the Asmat, a tribe in New Guinea he also lived with. He in fact became so much of an expert that, though he genially despises tourism, we see him making part of his living lecturing to shipboard tourists about Asmat culture.

New Guinea is where the film goes first because that’s initially the only aspect of his past Schneebaum is amenable to reliving. In one of those serendipitous moments documentarians live for, he accidentally runs into Aipit, a former lover from his tribal days, and has a genuinely touching reunion.

Perhaps emboldened by how well that trip went, Schneebaum agrees to try and find his old Peruvian home so deep in the Amazon Basin that literally hacking through the jungle is a necessity. But that doesn’t keep him from his routine of nonstop kvetching: “I’m mad at the film crew, I really am,” he typically confesses to the crew itself. “They’re forcing me into doing something I don’t want to do.”

Complaints notwithstanding, Schneebaum’s search for the Amarakaire and what he ends up finding is by far the most involving part of “Keep the River on Your Right.” When it’s over, the quest for inner peace that sent him into the jungle in the first place looks to have finally reached a resolution.

* MPAA rating: R, for depiction of mature thematic material. Times guidelines: discussions of cannibalism.

‘Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale’

Next Wave Films presents a Lifer Film in association with Stolen Car Productions, released by IFC Films. Directors David Shapiro, Laurie Gwen Shapiro. Producers David Shapiro and Laurie Gwen Shapiro. Executive producers Peter Broderick, Chris Vroom. Screenplay David Shapiro and Laurie Gwen Shapiro. Cinematographer Jonathan Kovel. Editor Tula Goenka. Music Steve Bernstein, Paul O’Leary. Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes.

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Nuart Theater, 11272 Santa Monica Boulevard, West L.A., (310) 478-6379.