Around the World in 90 Minutes
by Thomas Delapa
In
Sanskrit, samsara roughly means the "ever-turning
wheel of life and death." In director Ron Fricke's meditative non-verbal
documentary, Samsara translates into a mute mélange of image and music that
revolves from the humdrum to the stunning.
Five
years in the making, Samsara is a return trip to the New-Age travelogue
territory for Fricke that marked his 1992 Baraka -as well as
1983's trailblazing Koyaanisqatsi on which he was the cinematographer. In
this incarnation (or perhaps reincarnation), Fricke and collaborator Mark
Magidson trekked to 25 countries spanning the globe for a sensuous and spiritual
spectacle, but one that will leave some audiences hunting for a thematic road
map.
Fricke
calls his work a "guided meditation," and the cascade of images captures a
paradoxical world of dynamic contrasts: the sacred and profane, desert and
mountain, city and country, rich and poor, primitive and modern. Central to
both Buddhist and Hindu beliefs, "samsara"
isn't exactly an heavenly concept, but rather signifies the eternal cycle of
life and death, including the infernal bugaboo of human suffering.
This
odyssey starts at the birth of a new day at Buddhist monastery in India, where
monks painstakingly create, grain-by-grain, a mandala sand painting. Visually,
Fricke and Magidson's running motif is the human eye, whether on a resplendent
Chinese dancer, a statue of King Tut or on a gallery of candid subjects staring
at the camera, giving off expressions that run the gamut from disquieting defiance
to inviting exoticism.
Fricke's camera also takes the long view, giving us remarkable vistas of
deserts, mountains and cityscapes, often captured in revealing time-lapse. A
busy downtown shimmers at night, punctuated by a moving necklace of headlights,
while a river of commuters rushes through the Tokyo streets in fast-motion like
so many human ants. You may feel like a stranger in a strange land as you eye
these human caravans and wonder in bemusement where on earth we are
headed as a species.
But confused
audiences may well ask, "Where in the world is Ron Fricke?" since his
globe-trotting is so fast and furious that it might make your head spin.
Inner-directed spectators will take to the ambiguities and apparent incongruities
of Fricke's eco-montage. Others will no doubt wish for better directions.
Fricke doesn't readily connect the dots or his shots, so you'll have to DIY, folks.
Still,
there is much to marvel at in this trippy New Age tour, which could be looked
at as an upscale update of 1961's sensational Mondo Cane. Pessimists
will think that the modern world really has gone to the dogs, especially after
observing the unsavory scenes from a Chinese chicken factory, where
workers in pink jump suits and masks systematically kill on a scale that would
be the envy of Joseph Goebbels. Fricke never fails to remind us of evolution of
mechanized man, embodied in the scary spectacle of tens of thousands of Chinese
soldiers marching in robotic formation. In the frankly bizarre category, the
dead winner is a Ghana coffin shop, which makes it possible for one newly departed
to rest in peace inside a casket customized into a giant shotgun.
Fricke
aims high in this movie (it was photographed in lush widescreen 70mm), but the
results are scattershot. With no script per se, only a rough scenario, he and
Magidson let the images speak for themselves. They sometimes say volumes in
beauty, mystery, weirdness and wonder. Other times, they barely
whisper. Samsara is 90 minutes of checkered pictorial pleasure, but it's a
world away from cinematic nirvana.
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9/4/12
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