Samsara (2011)

"Filmed over nearly five years in twenty-five countries on five continents, and shot on seventy-millimetre film, Samsara transports us to the varied worlds of sacred grounds, disaster zones, industrial complexes, and natural wonders. "

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So what's it about? Is it just a bunch of video from different places around the world set to music?

I'll probably go see it sometime soon, but let's just say that based on the trailer it looks beautiful but stupidly simplistic in its discourse ("oh look how the western world is an empty shell of all-destroying consumerism while Asia is this magnificent realm of spirituality and culture!").

I saw it yesterday and I think it suffers from a double lose-lose situation.

The first lose-lose situation comes from the total lack of info given on the images you see. That forces them into two categories: the "oh, that again" and the "huh? what is that?". There are some brutal offenders in the first category (the worst for me were the 9875956th shot of the Hachiko crossing and subway pushers in Tokyo), but the main problem is that a good 80% of the movie falls into that category. There are some shots though that manage to escape this lose-lose conundrum, by showing something familiar in an original way (like the huge ensemble shot of the mecca pilgrimage) or by showing something new that immediately makes sense (for me it was the food factories - chicken grabbing robot, ravioli manufacturing).

The other lose-lose situation also comes from the choice of having no commentary and rely solely on images and montage. The problem is that, what our good friend the Russian film theoreticians called intellectual montage, is only able to produce very crude and simplistic effects through contrast or analogy, which elicit mostly two reactions: "yeah... that's retarded" and "huh? wtf do they mean by that?" I am sorry, but when you edit images from a handgun factory in the Philippines with AK armed african tribes men or the Korean JSA with the israeli-palestinian wall, nothing of intellectual value is created, because the crudeness of the collage does absolutely no justice to the complexity of the situations on both sides of it. There are some cases when it sorta works, like when we see a manufacturing chain followed by a recycling chain, but that was already in (the pretty good) Manufactured Landscape. Sadly there are many cases where the movie is downright insulting to both our intelligence and the people it films. The worst offenders being comparing chain workers to robots with a neat skit on the alienation of the workingman that reeks of formaldehyde and comparing Thai transsexual prostitutes to realdolls... oh and there is also this amazingly stupid 'food processing factory' to 'mass distribution' to 'fast food' to 'fat people' montage, made that much more absurd by the fact the chicken and pork plants were based in China (that does not have to worry about the bmi of its population).

Well... this all sound more negative than I really felt, because no matter how clich?, dumb or wtf the discourse was, no matter how well known most of the imagery was, seeing it in a theater was a glorious experience. It's shot on 70mm film and then scanned and converted on DCP. I am not sure what is the resolution they used, but it was often jaw dropping in its level of detail and the awe it inspired. The directing was nothing special, but at least it kept things solemn enough with fixed shots or slow travelings. It also often found the right distance to give the right effect, making good use of a high definition that is shinning both in close-ups and in wide shots. The film is not excessively long, so, despite its flaws (that are mitigated - or at least transformed - if you have not seen many documentaries), it's a film-going experience that is well worth the admission price.


PS: For thought provoking though, we will prefer the aforementioned Manufactured Landscape or, even better, Nostalgia for the Light. The most patient can also try to venture intoWest of the Tracks.

trailer made it look like a modernized version of Koyaanisqatsi set in other parts of the world

The director of Samsara was the cinematographer of Koyaanisqatsi but not of its two sequels. Koyaanisqatsi also was boosted to a quasi mystic experience by Phillip Glass' score.

Szlia_sl said:

The director of Samsara was the cinematographer of Koyaanisqatsi but not of its two sequels. Koyaanisqatsi also was boosted to a quasi mystic experience by Phillip Glass' score.

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Every time I think of Koyaanisqatsi now, all I can think of is scrubs .

Szlia, what did you think of Baraka though? I was introduced to Baraka in a photo class forever ago and have loved it since, and I think from that perspective it's amazing. It seems like all of the complaints you had about Samsara could apply to Baraka equally, so I'm curious. Dude loves his time lapses of intersections.

I have never seen Baraka and only saw the first of the "qatsi" on VHS (a hint that it was not yesterday!). That said, there is absolutely no doubt that the cinematography in those films is stellar and that Ron Fricke is a grandmaster at his craft. There are some super smooth flying time-lapses over cities at night that just boggle the mind and catch the breath.