Netflix Streaming: Samsara

Ron Fricke's 2011 follow-up to "Baraka," "Samsara," is a stunningly beautiful achievement in non-dialogue experimental film-making. Who will enjoy this film? If you enjoyed "Man with a Movie Camera," "Baraka," "Koyannisqatsi," or "Sans Soleil" you'll enjoy watching the breathtaking imagery that is "Samsara." Terrence Malick fans will also likely enjoy this film (If I was Malick I'd be trying to get Fricke to do my cinematography; apologies to Lubezki). But even if you don't know who Malick is and you've never seen a non-dialogue experimental film in your life, "Samsara" is surely an excellent entry point.

The film was shot over a period of 4 years on 70mm. Fricke tracks massively beautiful scenes from across the globe as well as its tiny-in-comparison inhabitants. He uses slow-motion, time-lapsed photography, and original camera movement that induces a visceral experience (visceral experiences are my favorite kind when it comes to film) in the viewer. The entire film and score moves with the rhythm of the ocean's tides. It's simply captivating. The word "Samsara" has to do with the wheel of life in Tibetan Buddhism. Within the first 30mins of the film, we see Tibetan monks painstakingly creating a sand painting of the wheel of life. In the end we see them destroy it. It's a practice to teach the impermanence of all things. Indeed, the entire film can be seen as telling a story via "intellectual montage" of life & death, permanence & impermanence, and the flow of life.

Some of my favorite parts include a tattooed man with a child, a thrilling sequence of a man creating creepy masks out of clay on his face and then destroying them, a dance sequence performed by prisoners, a sequence of worshipers at Mecca, time-lapsed sequences of the moon and sun moving across the sky, the time-lapsed sequences hovering over neon-lit cityscapes, and all of the close-ups of people starring intimately into the camera (an underused emotional device in narrative cinema). I highly recommend checking out this wonderful instance of pure cinema on Netflix Instant. I'm sure you'll be blown away by the imagery. It's definitely one of my favorite films of 2011.