Film Review: Samsara

Over the past few years, I became quite excited to see Ron Fricke’s latest film.  Having previously seen his beautiful cinematography in the Qatsi trilogy and Baraka, I figured that Samsara would at least offer a splendid and visually stunning experience.  I was just a little worried that the film wouldn’t deliver on the same level as Baraka.

Even though many viewers seem to favor Baraka over this, I found Samsara to have enough strengths of its own to stand out.  I’m still trying to figure out which of the two films I enjoy better.

On its own merits, Samsara offers a unique visual experience, as it explores many different countries and captures a plethora of exotic, unique, and inspiring sights.  The film takes us through temples, mountains, volcanoes, cities, factories, nightclubs, a prison, and other interesting places that I’d probably never see in a lifetime.  As usual, the film uses very solid, steady, and smooth photography to capture the settings and its people immaculately.  Some shots are quite impressive; one such shot that stood out to me occurred when the camera flew over a cityscape, while it was being time-lapsed, so it showed the city lights and cars moving really fast with smooth streaking lights, while the camera moved and passed over the skyscrapers.  There are plenty of other shots that utilize the time-lapse method, showing a sped-up view of things that makes the ordinary suddenly seem extraordinary.

What really pushes the film above and beyond for me will be its occasional moments of weird, wild, impressionistic imagery.  Key scenes that stand out to me include the shot of a man, shirtless and covered with tattoos, cuddling a baby gently and doting on him.  There’s some startling imagery of patients at a cosmetic surgery, juxtapose to scenes of a Japanese sex doll factory.  There’s a wild and energetic scene of Filipino prisoners doing a dance routine in the prison courtyard.  There’s a shot of some woman with a weird face mask and weird-looking eyes (just one of many odd portrait shots throughout the film).  The one key scene that really propels the movie above and beyond in my viewpoint would be the scene about forty minutes in:  in a nightmarish fashion, a man behind a desk suddenly smears clay all over his face and daubs himself with ink, until he appears ghoulish.  It’s odd stuff like this that not only invokes an emotional reaction and stirs the spirit, but also reveals the wild and unusual things in our world that we may or may not even be aware of.

At first, I really wasn’t sure what the point of these images was.  As it goes on, the film does string up some common themes of death and rebirth, and of human civilization.  It does so quite sublimely by putting the images together in a way that will make the audience put two-and-two together.  The title Samsara is Sanskrit for “continuous flow,” and that’s pretty much what the film does:  it continuously flows from one scene to another to allow for a continuous flow of thought and feeling.

With its expert craftsmanship, exotic subject matter, and a wonderful music score, Samsara is a strong piece of work, and is definitely worth a look.

5/5 (Experience:  Very Good | Content:  Very Good | Film:  Perfect)