Baraka

Better late than never, and for me it was worth the wait. I rented Baraka, a nonverbal film by Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson. Baraka, a sufi word meaning blessing or a spiritual power believed to be possessed by certain persons or objects has no plot or story line and is comprised of stunning cinematic scenes brilliantly strung together. It opens with a scene in the Himalayan mountains; a snow colored monkey is sitting in a hot spring looking pensive, wise and slightly melancholy. Deeply thought provoking scenes are woven together juxtaposing variations of life on earth such as Buddhist monks lighting hundreds candles in a temple to scenes of war and flamethrowers to traffic in China. The film was shot in the very expensive, extremely high definition TODD-AO 70mm format. This made the scenes sharp and stunning and conveyed the overwhelming beauty and horror of development on this planet. A computer-controlled camera was developed by these filmmakers to capture the time-lapse shots, such as clouds passing over white mountains, a solar eclipse and Park Avenue rush hour traffic.

The film has a deeply spiritual aspect as almost every type of religion is documented, from Muslim pilgrimages to tribal African dances, which gave me a profound understanding of the fundamentally divine aspect of human beings. And yet the pendulum swings both ways and we see the destructive powers of our species and our tragic nature. The film left me contemplating evolution and what modern man had been reduced to and successfully achieved. I saw that innate spiritual nature of human beings combined with fast food, war, and pollution; indeed the reoccurring scene of the solar eclipse throughout the film was a nice metaphor of this pretty tragedy. I have been telling everyone to go see this film. If anything its aesthetic beauty and moving music by composer Michael Stearns is enough attraction, but the kaleidoscopic view of life on earth is so essential for anyone who wants to gain a bird’s eye view of life on earth and our part in it. Its great to see with a few friends and then talk about the various thoughts it left each with, and there will be many