To fully comprehend the rapturous new film from the Bay Area-based team of director-cinematographer Ron Fricke and producer Mark Magdison, first, consider the audacity of its production: Five years, 25 countries, no story per se. That’s right: Samsara, billed as a continuation of Fricke and Magidson’s 1992 film Baraka, is a non-narrative enterprise without actors or dialogue, in which, as Magidson puts it, “image is the main character.”
In this context, “image” is abundantly and importantly plural. For Samsara, Fricke and Magdison have assembled a vivid, vast montage. They invite us to sample the earthly textures of factories, disaster zones, ancient ruins, and several variously interpretable world wonders. They introduce us to human multitudes: pilgrims in Mecca, dancers in China, prisoners in the Philippines, and even a few freaky androids in Japan. Driven forward by musical accompaniment from Marcello De Francisci, Lisa Gerrard, and Michael Stearns, they survey moving waters, molten explosions and time-lapse swirls of stars and headlights.
The images just keep coming, as befits the film’s title, a sanskrit word meaning “continuous flow,” or “ever turning wheel of life.” In the Buddhist view, that wheel spins toward Nirvana but can take a while to get there. What matters, we tell ourselves, is the journey — that cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth. In Samsara, this pertains to a demonstrably multifaceted relationship between the Earth and its inhabitants.
