Those who attend art/documentary films may recall the ‘80s groundbreaker “Koyaanisqatsi,” with its stunning visuals contrasting natural and manmade worlds. The cinematographer responsible for that visually intoxicating 1982 film, Ron Fricke, now brings us “Samsara,” playing in a limited engagement through Sept. 20 at Cinerama, 2100 Fourth Ave.
Fricke and his crew took a five-year multinational trek throughout the world to capture memorable images using large-format, 70mm Panavision cameras, and the Cinerama’s newest digital-projection technology delivers their product perfectly to its satisfyingly large, single theater screen with crisp multichannel music.
In format, “Samsara” follows a similar pathway as did its predecessor “Koyaanisqatsi,” with visuals alone supplying the narrative. Technically, the presentation could not be better, but artistically, results are mixed. While often beautiful and occasionally stunning, “Samsara” comes freighted with a heavy-handed and, at times, crude message of condemnation that would seem to apply to just about everyone in the position to attend a screening.
Make no mistake: If you plan to attend this film seeking nothing more than a lyrical, mesmerizing travelogue of astonishing images of beauty, “Samsara” will deliver more than you bargained for or will be comfortable with.
No hidden agenda
The film justifies a PG-13 rating. There are aspects of Fricke’s perspective on humanity that would not be appropriate for young children to see, and even adults should find his take on human life disturbing.
Producing a strong negative reaction is intentional, but the film’s marketing offers the audience little warning. Fricke describes “Samsara” as a “…Non-verbal guided mediation on the themes of birth, death and rebirth. ‘Samsara’ really means the wheel of life, or the impermanence of things.”
One might take his description to imply that the resulting visual message would be benign or neutral in tone, but Fricke’s chosen point of view turns out to be largely misanthropic. As far as this reviewer could tell, the director’s thesis is that we all have the misfortune to live in an insane urban dystopia and that industrialized humankind is an entirely soulless mechanism.
Not to put too fine a point on it, we are unconscious of our own lack of humanity, existing as mechanical commoditized robots, lacking any compassion or individuality. In this view, only persons living beyond the horrors of life in our industrialized, urban hell can remain human.
The message as presented here is anything but subtle. If you would like to avoid knowing details in advance, read no more.
Contrasting images
Interposed with thrusts into the ugliness of industrialized meat production, the production of life-size, robotic, human sex dolls, numbered and gyrating sex workers and prison inmates compelled to dance in mass synchronization, Fricke presents as his recurring motif the accusing faces of aboriginal people, or persons suffering in appalling global poverty, balefully staring down the viewer in extended, bitter close-ups.
As if that wouldn’t make the premise clear enough, we watch a performer playing the part of a generic office worker violently smear his head with globs of some sort of paste or clay and repeatedly mime the act of blinding and cutting himself in an indulgent, extended orgy of self-loathing, as “Samsara”’s thunderous soundtrack shrieks, rubbing our noses into the horror of it all.
On the other hand, thanks to Fricke’s signature time-lapse photography, we see abandoned houses and landscapes contrasted with eternal patterns of wheeling stars. We swoop dizzyingly over fields of crystalline glaciers.
We are privileged to observe as a stunning Buddhist mandala is painstakingly created from grains of colored powder by spiritually devoted monks, who then destroy it in a powerful evocation and reminder of the fact that all things will pass.
There were a few moments during “Samsara” when that was a comforting thought.
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