1992: Baraka (25th!)

What else happened this year? Yugoslav war stuff. Rodney King was this year too, I know that!

What is the plot - in one sentence? It's a non-narrative documentary movie filmed in various countries around the world.

I don't have time, just spoil it for me? A lot of footage of various things is shown, religious practices, cultural practices, and then the focus moves more onto the mechanisation and urbanisation of the world.

What is the meaning of the title? Baraka is the Sufi word for Essence, breath, or blessing, according to wikipedia

It's very intereting to see 1990s general fashion, and what people did when there weren't phones to distract them.

Anything that's not aged well? Does a woman get slapped around? In a good way, this is very of its time. Good because that's what they were aiming for, a snapshot of various processes and rituals seen around the world today. There are also a lot of scenes of nature, which, to be honest, I wouldn't have minded being told where they were.

What is telling is that a lot of helicopter footage used in the move would now be drone footage - there's a scene where some flamingos are shown flying away from above, when they would have been less spooked by a smaller, quieter drone, possibly.

There's a large section showing the contrast between the spiritual and the modern, and it's in Kyoto, there's a scene in a temple, then scenes of people walking around.  In terms of fashion, mindset and looks, it seems more than a mere generation ago. Also distracting is that most of the children in this movie would now be middle aged.

There are some scenes of automation: people making cigarettes, people making (what would now be hopelessly outdated) computer boards, and other tasks which would now be done automatically.

Probably the only really jarring thing was some footage of the funeral pyres in India - it was pretty on the nose as I was watchign it during the peak of Covid-19 hitting India. There was some stuff in Auschwitch too, but everything done was done for reasons of interest.

Any thoughts? this is very similar in style to Samsara and Koyaanquotsi, both of which I have seen also. Samsara is the sequel to this movie, as it has a lot of similar themes and images to it. That means that it was very familiar, but still interesting. 

This is a very beautiful and intriguing piece of film, and which shows some great scenes and sights from around the world. The initial focus on religion and religious ceremonies, each more esoteric and pointless than the next: what god, I ask, would require padlocks to be kissed like that shown early on?

There are also scenes of industrialisation, of nature, including some great shots of volcanos (always a joy), and of civic places - most notably the giant cement car park that is Tiananmen Square - but only a couple of years after a bloody massacre. How strange and interesting that they let them film there then.

There are a lot of scenes of environmental destruction, and also noticeable is an overriding theme of the city life as a human body. Distant, sped-up shots of traffic flowing, with the underlying music sounding like a breath or heartbeat, shows the link between the people and the environments they are stuck in. 

One of the most interesting shots for me is a shot of a train station central plaza (probably New York, but it's not labelled), and it's shown for a long time in fast motion, people whizzing by, then not as no passengers go through, then a mass of people whizzing by, however, in this scene, there's a single woman who is next to a coffee kiosk, sitting, standing, moving from place to place over what must have been hours. It's a lovely thing to notice in all of the bustle.

Would you recommend this? I had seen the 'sequel' to this, Samsara, first, and it's an equally hypnotic piece of art. However, that movie leans into the environmental degradation and loss of autonomy of human work a little more. This movie has an extended scene of chicks being sorted - if they were male they're thrown into a blender, if they're female they're roped into a life of egg-laying after having their beaks blinted painfully. 

Animal treatment is shown in more detail in the sequel (where automatic milking is shown, for example), but you can sense the common theme. There's beauty in this planet, there's madness to the rituals which happen, but there's also sadness and inequality. Even in this movie there are still people scrabbling around in the dirt. It's interesting, but a reminder of the misery that so much of humanity endures daily.

Despite that, there's a weird waving and shouting frenzy in Cambodia (I think) where a group of men just danced and clapped and screamed around a temple, which was a lot of fun.

Final thoughts? As a snapshot of life on the planet at the time, this is very interesting and obviously its very well shot. You can tell that an awful lot of time has gone into every aspect of it. However, with all of these things, it does at times seem to appear like a two hours long HDTV demonstration in a department store's largest, crispest TV.

Despite that, it's an impressive piece of work and one I'm glad I saw. 

More of this nonsense can be found royt mhyuh