Samsara

source: Samsara

My BFF and myself went to see this tonight, the last night it was playing... This was the most Intense, Mind Blowing, Movie I have ever seen. The experience was just amazing.... My tears rolled down immediately from the beginning until the very end... the chicken, cows and pigs really hit me, hurt a lot, I am a Vegan and I had to look away thru this, it was very painful... I learned soooooo much from these two hours and can honestly tell you that this Documentary, did change something within me and I continue to seek the Love, Compassion for all of Life, and Loving Beings with the hearts to touch. We are one, we are all, we are Love.... Thank You so VERY much for this Amazing Love!..

1. Full of banalities and clichés like slums v. expensive high-rise apartment buildings; slaughtered pigs - fat people eating hamburgers - preparation to a liposuction operation. Some episodes are clearly far-fetched - like a guy (a school-teacher, I suppose), covering his head with mud. What does it have to do with the idea of the film? Even if it happens to have any other idea than the one I described above. 2. The worst thing - the trailer makes you think that you are going to see beautiful things, while what you actually see are children's corpses, animals' carcasses and mutilated faces. 3. I sincerely regret having spent money on buying the tickets to watch this film and in this way sponsoring its authors.

I just saw a screening of Samsara at the TIFF, at the brilliant TIFF Lightbox theatre. Wow. A film that took 5 years to make and co-ordinate. Shot in Panarama 70mm, across 26 countries, needing major government and regulatory clearances, having to wait for certain seasons or lunar phases to get the light to hit the way director Fricke wanted...carefully strung together with a massive 7.1 surround sound design and music score from Michael Stearns, Marcello de Francisci, and Lisa Gerrard (of Dead Can Dance). The 70mm negative has been digitally scanned and oversampled at 8k resolution (much like the 'Baraka' Blu-ray); the TIFF Lightbox theatre installed a brand new Christie 4k projector (Christie Projection Systems rushed the projector before its release to the market specifically for this event) making it the first true 4k screening of it's kind. From sweeping landscapes to time-lapse sequences of the night sky and from exclusive looks into the processing of food to the consumption and effects it has on the human body, Samsara is nothing short of astounding. Modern technology, production lines, and human robotics are juxtaposed against a backdrop of deserts, garbage mounds as far as the eye can see, and traffic congestion in modern centres. The time-lapse footage is simply transcendent. In fact, I caught myself questioning the reality of some of the landscape vistas and night skyline montages...they looked so hyper-real that I thought they must have come from a CG lab somewhere. Simply astonishing. The richness, depth and clarity of colour and image achieved within the processes utilized gives birth to the most beautiful visual meditation that I have ever witnessed. As one film journalist noted, "That Samsara is instantly one of the most visually-stunning films in the history of cinema is reason enough to cherish it, but Fricke and co-editor Mark Magidson achieve truly profound juxtapositions, brimming with meaning and emotion. It sounds preposterous, but it's true: In 99 minutes, Samsara achieves something approaching a comprehensive portrait of the totality of human experience. If you're even remotely fond of being alive, Samsara is not to be missed." If you ever come across the chance to see this film in a decent theatre, run, and let your eyeballs (and earholes) feast upon its brilliance.

Just watched the Sky Screening at Greenwich-O2. Thank you Sky for the ticket. Amazing movie with great visuals (mind it... no added CG). The time lapse sequences were simply amazing. Can totally believe that it took 5 years to complete the picturization. Every second spent on creating this visual symphony is worth it. Real impressed with the production team's reach. They even managed to capture amazing sequences from within a jail in China. Now I need to find a way of watching this team's 1992 movie 'Baraka'. I sincerely hope that it is commercially successful so that, we can see more from this amazing team.

For the first 10 minutes I thought it was a mistake to have bought the ticket. It was first time for me to see a documentary film without any commentary. The images were so beautiful and interesting, but I expected that I would get bored in a few minutes. And in fact, I did. but after a while, somehow I gradually got absorbed in the movie again. Keeping watching gorgeous images leads me to a kind of meditation. and in the end, I ended up getting impressed. You can experience something different from ordinary documentary. It is definitely a movie for theater, not for a small home television. If you get interested in this movie, you should go see it in a theatre.

There is no doubt Samsara is visually breathtaking. But it is not only about nice "pictures" or the good and bad face of humanity. The logic of this movie follows the rules of the classic fascist aesthetics. It is about greatness in every level, a totally megalomaniac scale on what Mr. Ron Fricke thinks about the world. Come on, who the hell believes that the US is only about buying, eating and guns? who thinks that in certain communities there are no bad things, like the scenes in Nepal or with the Maasai people. Only the innocence of the children and the sacred art. South-America is about the favelas and trash collectors? It is a tradition in Europe(US as well) that people are looking for untouched lands and holiness in the Far-East, but come on, it is obviously a lie. Without a "script" it works only as a photo collage, not more. I cannot believe that Fricke sees the world in that simple way. Our information about the world is more layered and more complex, than guns and McDonalds are bad and Buddhism is good. How they connect the scenes is also a bit clumsy. After the industry of weapons we can see a dead man, who is buried in a gun shaped coffin. So the message of the movie is equally deep like a summer blockbuster and they even doesn't let you think about it, they make it so obvious for you, that you only have to accept their ideas. That is why I say that this is an old fashioned propaganda movie. Luckily it doesn't serve any ideology, but it could have been an amazing experience...what a pity!

I came across the trailer for Samsara having never heard anything about it before, or the filmmakers involved, but the trailer alone made me want to check it out. I got to see it in IMAX and I'm glad I did as, as everyone else has said, visually it is stunning, so the bigger the screen you can see it on the better. I have never seen Fricke's previous work such as Baraka so I had no idea what to truly expect when I sat down before it started. I see people have mentioned they got bored after 30 minutes due to the lack of dialog/narration and that overall it's too long but I couldn't disagree more. From the first scene to last, I was totally engrossed in the visual and audio experience. The juxtaposition of concepts and themes worked, I got to see places and activities I didn't know about in a way I have never seen before. The soundtrack is spot on, capturing and switching the moods perfectly. It moves you. I see critics have said that the message of Samsara isn't clear but I don't think it needs a message. Seeing Samsara has enhanced my understanding, and appreciation for, the way our world is and works, and what really matters most to us. How many times can you go to the cinema and come out a more knowledgeable person? Samsara is quite simply a work of art and, like all great art, you interpret it in your own individual way and it makes you think. Do yourself a favor and experience it.

This film was a disappointment for me, especially considering how much I loved Baraka (the director's other film which is very similar). I could go into many details about what I disliked about it, but the main points are these: 1. It's not nearly as groundbreaking as you might think. Why? Well, first of all, although the cinematography and scenery is indeed stunning at times, technically speaking, it's no step up from Baraka which was made twenty years prior to this. They were both shot on 65MM (released in 70MM) film. Essentially, nothing has changed in Fricke's filmmaking techniques. He repeats many of the same or similar types of shots from Baraka. We get the people staring into the camera who must feel awkward and are usually not smiling. (How is this better than just a photograph, by the way?) We also see more time-lapse photography of cities and factories and lots of people moving about; again, this is nothing new. 2. There are too many stereotypical travel sites/sights and clichés. If you like travelling at all and have read or seen any travel magazines, or even if you've been watching a lot of films and documentaries for a while, then you should already be quite familiar with many of the places and images shown in this film. The opening shots in Burma, while admittedly amazing, are not much better than what has been seen in Lonely Planet guides and National Geographic magazines. I could say the same for typical scenes of African tribes and even the poverty (again, stereotypes of Africa - they must be all poor or savages, right?). Then we have the Hajj in Saudi Arabia which has been seen numerous times in other places. Same goes for the geishas and Torii gates in Japan (plus freaky robots and sex dolls - Japan is always either high tech and freaky or traditional and quaint), and the ladyboys of Thailand. And lets not forget the scenes in famous American National Parks which have been done to death already. There is virtually nothing original or different here. About the only thing that stood out to me was the incongruous performance art scene which felt out of place and designed to shock more than anything else. 3. The most important reason why this film fails in my opinion is that while it seems to have some kind of agenda, it can't really make up its mind what it is. Whatever message we are meant to take away from it isn't clear. There is no real discernible structure to the whole work, which is essential to have without any kind of narration or dialogue. At first it seems to be a Buddhist film (and the title certainly implies that), but then why all the scenes of churches and Muslims? Doesn't really fit to my mind. And there seems to be more pessimism here than in Baraka; Samsara is more in line with the earlier Qatsi trilogy that Fricke was also involved with. But then you see great scenes of beauty. I suppose you could argue that Fricke is just trying to show life in its entirety - that there is suffering as well as beauty in this world. In that case, you might say that he is successful. But it has been done better before by other filmmakers and even by Fricke, in my opinion. This is a largely redundant and superficial project. It seems to want to be deep, but it really only skims the surface. Lastly, although I sound pretty harsh in my assessment, I do want to note that this is a film to see on the largest and best screen possible. If you only care about pretty images (along with a few ugly ones), then you may get more out of this than I did. But I'd still say you'd be better off seeing Baraka again or for the first time.

Human subjects are urged to look at the camera and not speak and not smile. Taped subjects such as landscapes are sometimes shown at altered speeds. Cool images: pharaoh's head; castle on a peak; Tibetan images; active sand dunes; high ceilings and stained glass in cathedrals; orange dunes in stark light; dead tree stumps against the rotation of the stars in the night skies; aerial videos of cities at night. Uncool images: ugly old statues with massive time lapse; unused buildings filling up with sand; ruined, abandoned strip malls, stores, school rooms; automobiles and small houses interacting unnaturally; man covering his head with clay since it looks like a cheap, gimmicky horror film; chicken, bovine, pork processing; plastic surgery pre-processing; humans doing garbage recycling by hand for a living. Indifferent images: oh, so many, such as the indoor skiing. After watching the whole film twice, I'd say that all the images became indifferent. This is just concatenation in void context; all significance has been driven down to zero by the silent treatment. If you've got a story to tell, tell it. Use language and planning. After watching the film the first time, I read well over 50 reviews of it. In almost all cases, the review consisted of interpretations from experiences and axes to grind from outside the film. Frankly, it looked like stretching in every case. Watching the film again reinforced this opinion. Documentary films, by and large, have issues to raise and things to say about those issues. This film has images to present, but no point of view. The reviewers I read loaded in their own POV, whereas I'd say this film is just "I've collected a number of high quality images."