Review by Ken Burke
The worldwide visual imagery is astounding but the
indictments of the failures for our species and our planet are all to familiar
while the subtle imploring to turn to spirituality for salvation feels a bit
too little, too late, but it’s all heartfelt documentary.
If a tangible object can define the
concept of a labor of love, certainly Samsara
would seem to be the manifestation of that idea. Directed, shot, co-written, and co-edited by
Ron Fricke, along with producer, co-writer, and co-editor Mark Magidson, this
film took 5 years to come to fruition, constructed with its spectacular 70mm
footage from 25 countries. In that some
of its images were clearly staged for the camera—mostly the portraiture of
various global representatives quietly displaying their faces, tattoos, ceremonial
body paint, etc. but 1 clearly staged performance where a seeming businessman
covers himself in paint in an office setting—it may not be considered by some
to be a pure documentary. (Although if you trace the concept of the feature doc
back to Robert Flaherty’s 1922 Nanook of
the North you’ll find that he staged most of what you see, not so much to
create a false reality of the lives of the Inuit people of the Arctic Circle
area [with what there is left of it a century later you may have to see this old film to full appreciate another of the Earth's losses] but to recreate events that he
couldn’t just wait around and reshoot several times in order to get a useable
rendition of a seal hunt, etc.) Further, there’s clearly a softly-delivered plea for a turn to spiritual
guidance to rescue us from the increasing devastation we’re doing to our planet
and our lives which some might consider to be improper propagandizing in what
they assume to be a factual account of a topic (but there again, that’s not
understanding the true nature of documentary—and further implies a total
unawareness of doc polemics, whether from the left such as in Michael Moore’s
2004 anti-Bush Fahrenheit 9/11 or the
right such as the current anti-incumbent diatribe, Gerald R. Molen and Dinesh
D’Souza‘s 2016: Obama’s America, both
of which press their cases in ways unlikely to convince those not already in
the choir [such as me on the left if that's not clear enough already], but docs have been doing this even since Flaherty’s original
intention of convincing the “civilized” that their far-flung ethnic cousins
also lead admirable lives), although even if you don’t attribute Arctic ice
meltdown to global warming you’d be hard pressed when watching Samsara to not acknowledge the presented
horror of the huge piles of discards that demonstrate our obsessive quest for
objects and the resulting useless disposal of such (along with the tragic
reality of impoverished people scavenging through these mountains of muck,
looking for useful trash or maybe even consumable food) and the soul-searing
visions of hundreds of factory workers pumping out countless new devices for
the more affluent among us to consume, then dispose of. If the title simply refers to the
Hindu/Buddhist concept of the “ever-turning wheel of life” with its related
grandeur and tragedy, the images from Fricke and Magidson achieve their purpose
to “document” the wondrous planet we share with billions of other humans (and
trillions of other life forms) and the sorrow that comes from nature’s periodic
cleansing of our long-occupied home along with the suffering we bring upon
ourselves with our passion for unsustainable growth and overconsumption of resources.
This is a film that literally speaks
for itself as it uses no graphics or narration to explain anything, it just
presents what the filmmakers have carefully collected and chosen to show you,
so you’ll have to decide for yourselves if you think that the implied argument
to turn to a higher power for help in these troubled times is comforting, convincing,
corny, offensive, or indecipherable.
There’s no doubt that you’ll be impressed by the majestic imagery of
volcanoes, deserts, cathedrals, sculptures, etc., whether delivered via straight
photography or time-lapse/pixilated variations just as you’ll be depressed by
images of slums, sulfur pits, and animals in assembly-line slaughterhouses, even
possibly amused/bemused by other assembly lines of sex dolls, the huge indoor ski
slope in desert-bound Dubai, and the weird collection of coffins shaped like
fish, airplanes, and pistols. Maybe
you’ll feel the irony of cramped multi-story dwellings in the shadow of Egypt’s
ancient Great Pyramids or maybe you’ll find spiritual inspiration from the vast
Muslim Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, Jews praying at Jerusalem’s ancient Wailing
Wall, the vast spaces of the huge Christian St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican
City within Rome, or the intensely-focused construction of a colorful sand
mandala by Buddhist monks, a stunning creation that is intentionally destroyed
upon its completion leaving just the mundane sand, echoing the final shot of
lofty dunes in a vast, empty desert (likely the Sahara or the Gobi, based on
its immensity). Conversely, you might feel either that you’ve seen many things like this before (dating back at least
to Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 Koyaanisqatsi
with its many pixilated images of rushing chaos in the modern world,
illustrating the title taken from the Hopi language for “life out of balance”)
and still don’t see nearly enough human desire outside of the movie house to
reverse these lethal choices we keep making or you’ll wonder just how
these allusions to spiritual redemption are going to finally connect after
misfiring for so many centuries. (Just as in another “ancient” classic, D. W.
Griffith’s 1916 Intolerance where
humanity’s self-inflicted crimes through the ages are suddenly redeemed in a
“lions-laying-down-with-the-lambs” final sequence of heavenly redemption that
seems unmotivated by any events of the film except the last-minute rescue of
The Boy, about to be hanged for a murder he didn’t commit, by the guilt-ridden
testimony of The Friendless One, a woman spurned by her lover, looking for
revenge—but if that’s all it takes to bring about world salvation, maybe we can get
Robert Miller [Richard Gere] to cop to his misconduct in Nicholas Jarecki’s Arbitrage [full review next week] and
the Pearly Gates will swing open for our misbegotten, just as they did in
Griffith’s magnum opus almost a century ago.)
“These are the days of miracle and
wonder, And don’t cry baby, don’t cry, Don’t cry,” sings Paul Simon in “The Boy
in the Bubble” from his likely magnum opus, 1986’s Graceland. Simon wisely
never tells us why we shouldn’t cry in these times when the “dry wind … swept
across the desert, And it curled into the circle of birth, And the dead sand,
Falling on children, The mothers and the fathers, And the automatic earth,” but with their larger medium than a single song are we satisfied that Fricke and Magidson don’t tell us anything beyond what we see for
ourselves in Samsara? The images are stunning to look at, but the
silent response to “What next?” like the hushed winds blowing across the desert
at the end of this film just tell us that despite the “Journey” so far (for
those who get the pun—but don’t ever think I’m comparing this merely OK band to
the artistry of Paul Simon), “The wheel in the sky keeps on turnin’, I don’t
know where I’ll be tomorrow.” Fricke and
Magidson don’t know either, nor should we expect them to, but that final
ambiguity may present you with more questions than you’d prefer when the wheel
of Samsara leaves you alone in the
dark during the final credits. I’ll just
leave you with a couple more images from this visual, if not completely conceptual,
masterpiece because it demands to be seen, in large format if possible, if you really want to be able to talk
about it.
The reality
for many of you, though, may be that there’ll be no hope of even finding Samsara (or avoiding its meaning in the real world) to see until it’s available on
video, so just be patient and then take a look for yourself, preferably on as big a screen as you can find. Just in
passing, another film that takes on the subject of the impending failures of
human civilization that may be even harder to find than Samsara is Jamie Bradshaw and Aleksandr Dulerayn’s Branded (with its quasi-documentary feel
using narration and story-update interludes to impart its surrealistic tone),
which is seemingly playing in so few theatres that even the reviewers can’t
find it to trash it. (Rotten Tomatoes gives it 13% based on only 8 reviews,
Metacritic says 20% based on 6, and Movie Intelligence shoots all the way up to
39% but based on just 5; box-office returns indicate lack of exposure [or
audience interest] as well with only about $240,000 returned through last
weekend [Samsara’s doing somewhat
better with almost $483,000], which is really pathetic for Branded given that something as strange and obscure as Benh
Zeitlin’s bayou-apocalypse tale Beasts of
the Southern Wild is still playing after two months, taking in a bit over $10
million [see my review of this one if you like in the July 18, 2012 posting], so
you know that Branded is about as
obscure as a mainstream release ever gets.) In this strange allegory, set and shot in Russia, the boy Misha Galkin (played as a young adult
by Ed Stoppard) is hit by lighting in Moscow in the early ‘80s, but when we
shift to present day he’s a fierce capitalist on a lightning level of
accomplishment as a marketing genius who helps the fast-food industry giants
regain their fortunes after a period of health-consciousness-driven corporate
losses by making “fat beautiful”; however, when Misha’s mentor, Bob Gibbons
(Jeffrey Tambor), breaks up the romance between his daughter, Abby (Leelee
Sobieski, who looks to me like she has to be Helen Hunt’s daughter but isn’t),
and Misha the young visionary starts seeing weird demons everywhere growing out
of people because of advertising and toxic products’ hold on the public (nice
riffs on real stuff with names like The Burger, Yupple, GiantSoft, Soda Soda,
and Johnny Vodker, with Max von Sydow of all people as their parent CEOs' marketing consultant), then sets out on a crusade that results in the demolition
of major mass consumption products and the ban on all ads in Russia. If Samsara
is a subtle meditation on the self-destructive tendencies of the human species
then Branded is its blatant opposite
in approach (not unlike the overt sociopolitical stance of the original Planet
of the Apes [Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968], which I just saw again for the
first time in decades at a winery screening [nice combination]), with rank but
intriguing combinations of seeming narrative insanity and scathing
condemnations of the atrocities of consumer culture. I’m more generous than my critical brethren, offering
it 3 ½ stars if this were an actual review, but warning you that if you seek it
out later on DVD (or want more info on it now at http://www.brandedmovie.com/) it may be hard to locate or to watch, as a film that
promotes Lenin as a marketing guru (for understanding that the cinematic medium
was the most effective way to sell communism to his newly liberated countrymen)
is likely an acquired taste even if you revel in its anti-capitalist message.
OK,
enough esoterica. Next week, back to the
mainstream with Arbitrage.
If you’d
like to meditate more deeply on Samsara
here are some suggested links:
We encourage you to look over our home page (ABOUT THE BLOG), found as
the first one in our December 2011 postings, to get more information on what
we’re doing and why we’re doing it.
You’ll also see our general Spoiler Alert warning that reminds you we’ll
be discussing whatever plot details are needed for our comments so please be
aware of this when reading any of our reviews and be aware of our formatting
forewarning about inconsistencies among web browser software which we do our
best to correct but may still cause some visual problems beyond our control.
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