Shooting
footage in twenty-five countries around the world, documentarian-visual
essayists Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson must have met thousands of fascinating
people. Yet, you will not meet any of
them on a personal level in their latest 70mm spectacle. Their aesthetic favors the people en mass and
dehumanized over messily unpredictable individuals. As their follow-up to 1992’s Baraka, director-cinematographer-co-writer-co-editor
Fricke & producer-co-writer-co-editor-co-musical director Magidson’s Samara takes viewers to some
awe-inspiring sites all over the globe, intending it all to signify the great
cosmic wheel of life, as the title translates from Sanskrit. Those who want to see it, should see in a
theater, the way it was meant to be seen, when Samsara (trailer
here) opens
tomorrow in New York.Think of this as The Wall for politically correct Volvo-driving health nuts. Deeply steeped in Eastern religious traditions, Samsara captures some amazing images, such as the opening Balinese dancers, the archaeological wonderland of Petra, and the Tibetan Buddhist monks of Thikse creating impermanent sand mandalas. It would probably deepen any viewers’ appreciations to hear the dancers discuss their incredibly disciplined collective choreography or to have the monks explain what the mandalas symbolize according to their faith, but Fricke and Magidson are not going there. There will be no talking and no text in the film.
Samsara brings to mind
an old airline commercial from years ago, in which a charming old Southwestern artist
tells viewers the young painters who move to New Mexico and are blown away by
the landscape are missing the point—it is the people who that are really
interesting. Fricke & Magidson are
like those landscape painters, duly filming the sweeping awesomeness of nature. Yet, in a way, this makes things so much neater
and tidier. When images of the disfigured
are contrasted with scenes of armament factories, we cannot help but get the
unsubtle message. Yet, the more we knew
about individual cases might make it far harder to indulge in sweeping
generalizations.
Some
of the sequences in Samsara are absolutely
arresting, like the shots of the Bagan temples in Burma, which did indeed grant
the filmmakers access, after quite a bit of diplomatic and bureaucratic
hoop-jumping. Sadly, when North Korea said
no, Kim really meant no, so Fricke and Magidson were unable to film one of the
giant choreographed stadium airangs. That’s
too bad, because it would have fit right in with the rest of Samsara.
