BARAKA
A film review by Max Hoffmann
Copyright 1993 Max Hoffmann
Seen at the SF's Castro theatre Nov 30 '93 9 on scale of 1 to 10 Big screen viewing a must!
Five years in the making ... 24 countries ... 70mm camera format ... a sea of sight and sound returns again and again to man's search for meaning ... this is a "visual poem" that will leave you with the hypnotic feeling you get after viewing films in one of those OmniMax theatres.
The film contains no narration or titles. Those of us with linear Western/Euro minds will be frustrated for the first half hour or so, trying to guess all the locations, or exactly what type of religious ritual is going on. Eventually it hits you, the "sameness" of many people of many races/beliefs/persuasions. The priests/nuns hemlines change, the head gear is different, they may genuflect in a different direction, but they are all reaching out to the same creator, the same mystery. Whatever religious propensity you have gradually melts away as you catch unexpected glimpses of yourself in someone elses eyes.
My only frustration with the film is that some of the sequences weren't long enough. A seductively rotating camera surrounded by whirling dervishes in a beautiful Turkish mosque could have gone on for another ten minutes as far as I was concerned. I felt myself reaching for the rewind button on the "remote" as the camera casually glided through a mosque of unearthly beauty (in Iran, I think) where all of the tiles were tiny mirrors of different colors that refracted light with the rainbow effect of the finest lead crystal.
The film introduces a new "time-lapse" photography in the 70mm format, in which the camera gradually moves on sensual track shots, while the heavens rotate in the background. It tempts one to wonder whether projected backgrounds or sandwich shots were used to capture the swiftly fleeing clouds while the camera moves into an arch rock in Utah, for instance. The slowly tracking time lapse camera carries us through door ways in Angor Wat while moonlight shadow swiftly course by, very much like being in a memorable Technicolor dream.
Many of the images are emotionally compelling and unforgettable; the implacable face of a rain forest pigmy juxtaposed with the murder of a tree, the ancient, wizened serenity of a mountain monkey in a natural hot spring spa in the mountains of Japan ... the monkey's face seems to express the world weary concern over so much of the human damage depicted in the film.
Many speeded-up shots deliberately force us to see ourselves, massed at a city crosswalk, then streaming across like army ants. The parallels to insects on the rain forest floor trying to escape another fallen tree is inescapable. The image of humans in India rummaging through an apparently endless garbage dump will stop your breath.
BARAKA is the Sufi word for "blessing" or "the breath." Cinematographer/director Ron Fricke (KOYAANISQATSI) and producer/co-editor Mark Magidson made three complete journeys around the world. The soundtrack, which captures everything from Tibetan bells to night bird calls with amazing clarity, gives the film perfect balance. I didn't catch the name of the third person who assisted Frick and Magidson in the world-class editing.
The film is difficult to classify, but you just may feel like joining the Green Party, or the Sierra Club after you've seen it. Big-screen viewing is a must. The film will lose at least 80% of it's impact in any video (even letterbox) format. Watch for it at an arthouse near you.
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