Baraka

That’s not a typo; this film has nothing to do with our new president. This is a movie of images, some beautiful, some profoundly disturbing. No dialogue at all. If you have seen Koyaanisqatsi and/or Powaqqatsi, you’ll know what I mean. This one is by Ron Fricke, who worked on Koyaanisqatsi and then made this one on his own. Some have seen an environmental message in this film and the others. The best I can do is say there are some obvious themes, chief among them the amazing variety of humanity’s religions and spirituality. We see holy men, holy places, religious rituals from all cultures around the globe. We see terrible poverty and breathtaking beauty, and our crowded, frantic world in time-lapse photography. It’s more like a moving painting than a story, and what I do when I watch it (I’ve seen it twice now), is let it wash over me. It’s 96 minutes long, but seems much shorter than that. Though it might seem to move ponderously at times, with many shots that are virtually stills, the time just seems to zip by. It was all shot with Todd-AO 70mm cameras, and most of the time they are virtually static, with only slow pans or dolly shots, and how refreshing is that in this age of jitter-cams and short cuts?