Excerpt from Reaction Newspaper:
Samsara
Ron Fricke’s 2011 Samsara is more some art than it is a documentary film. Without any dialogue, portrayal, or storyline, Samsara is lacking in the hallmarks of a story. Yet the viewer comes away from film sense changed, and Fricke will manage to convey . meaning and significance to the images around the screen. The storyline being told is actually a meta-narrative of human lifestyle, with profound commentary about issues like art, faith, war, scientific research, and mother nature.
The cinematography is the phoning card for Samsara. Shot in 70mm, the series of images says like a image collage. At times, it is like watching a great expertly delivered travel sales brochure, and at also, a Nationwide Geographic exploration of the world. The visual images is with a soundtrack, although nowhere perhaps there is any lien or vocabulary to come with the aesthetic spectacle. It is almost as if Fricke can be purposely showing that the limitations of human dialect in talking about issues like love, conflict, life, and death. The title of Samsara is in the Sanskrit term for the wheel of birth, death, and vitality to which individuals are sure and from where we should wish to transcend. As such, the title with the film perfectly suits it is material. Fricke shows the viewer displays of all 3 of these elements: birth, death, and rebirth. There is superb hope inside the imagery on screen, nevertheless there is also great sorrow and suffering.
Fricke plays together with the audience’s thoughts in amazing ways, interacting imagery that inspires happiness, curiosity, and wonder, with imagery that directly depicts pain and suffering at least, suggests that. Among the even more uplifting scenes include those that depict the natural miracles of the world, from your Sahara wilderness to smoldering volcanoes. A person with an inkling for travelling will desire for the places on camera. Furthermore, this symbolism is with no ethics, other than those that the viewer will certainly ascribe to it in terms of a sense of responsibility for looking after the earth and being a custodian to the world. Undoubtedly, Fricke is to some degree concerned with many ways human beings are caring (or not caring) for our planet. There are some views of all-natural disasters and pollution, which will reveal the filmmaker’s intention.
The images of ballet dancers from Philippines and other places around the world and also other artistic and cultural events are inspiring. Unlike the natural amazing things of the world, your wonders happen to be shown to be all those requiring tremendous feats of individual hard work and success. These images are designed to encourage greatness. However similar to the symbolism of the natural world, the pursuit of creative perfection is actually a morally neutral event that can assume wonderful ethical and political importance. For instance, the architectural marvels of Christianity in European countries were constructed in part within the blood shed by the crusaders and later, the imperialists.
Fricke does not shy away from the deeper side of human nature, and fact, would like the audience to come to conditions with just how potently harmful we can be. The series of pictures from the ballistics/munitions factory can be ironic because the principal points look innocent, like supports of lip stick, until we come across the disfigured face of the American soldier who also symbolizes the casualties of your bellicose world. There is an ironic splendor to the techniques human soldires are self-disciplined, and Fricke is very careful to connect that imagery towards the ways ballet dancers discipline and choreograph themselves too. Like dancers, the soldiers in armies push like one particular organism, suggesting all the energy and willpower going into that that could be channeled elsewhere – something better and constructive than war, death, and destruction. Religious beliefs is shown to be in between the two poles of war and art. As an example, the picture of crowds of people at Mecca also parallels the symbolism of the armies moving in unison, showing what human beings are capable of when becoming a member of together to achieve a common goal.
I typically wished there is more continuity between the photos, which at times seemed sketchy, as the filmmaker will jump from topic to topic. Nevertheless , this was rarely the case because the film surprisingly made sense in terms of conveying the central topics about human nature. One of the most strong segments with the film, and one that I really believe could have been developed on in even
