Film "Samsara": reviews and reviews

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

For all fans of visually beautiful films such as the iconic "Baraka", "The Tree of Life" and "The Artist", reviews of the film "Samsara" call to pay attention to this masterpiece. The title itself is Sanskrit for "continuous flow" or "ever-turning wheel of life" as translated by the filmmakers. Directed by director Ron Fricke and produced, co-edited and co-written by Mark Magidson over four years in twenty-five countries around the globe, the film is a cinematic storytelling that uses rhythm and music to highlight revelations and surprises.

Image contrast

Location: Nepal, Angkor Wat, Arctic, Tokyo, Arizona, Kenya, Yosemite, Dubai, Philippine prison and the border between North and South Korea. This is a collection or collage of beautiful and vibrant images, brought together for an impressive and meditative effect.

The Samsara documentary is based on various opposites: growth-decline, surprise-disgust, tradition-rootlessness, purpose-futility, faith-disbelief. Sharp contrasts exist in the painting, such as a colorful, doll-shaped Asian girl dressed in shimmering gold with bright red cherry earrings, and African men and women wearing a body mask and a patient expression; the fury of the volcano spews sparkling rubies into the air as bright clouds swirl in the sky, virgin sand in the vast desert contrasting with the intricate details of the frescoes and gold leaf cherubs on the cathedral ceiling.

Action painting

The film "Samsara" has no plot as such. This is a film that has no narration, commentary or dialogue, but there is, perfectly fitting, New Age ethnic music. Samsara travels the world to Tibetan monks, African tribesmen, Chinese factory workers, Los Angeles' tangled freeway network, the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, and more.

The film contains a bird's-eye view of a posh oriental inn, nude mannequins in sexy poses, bikini-clad pole dancers, and a fat man's bulging belly. Images of chickens, cows and pigs at different stages of the life cycle from captivity to the table are alarming, as is the production line that processes corpses, meat and bones.

According to the reviews, the film "Samsara" supports the themes of life and death, permanence and impermanence, the flow and rhythm of our world energy in everything. It contains a scene in whichTibetan monks painstakingly work on a detailed sand painting (which serves as a metaphor for the film and creates a continuous thematic throughline) and then destroys it.

Technical excellence

It is difficult to describe "Samsara", except that the picture was created thanks to many technical achievements. The film itself is a rare artifact, due to the technical ability and will of the filmmakers who had to capture these images. Fricke is a true cinematographer, when most films are shot in 35mm (more mm, more resolution), Samsara is captured on 70mm film converted to digital 4k. Which really just means the picture looks absolutely incredible. No grain, no jumping, no blur.

Audience reviews of Samsara have indicated that the footage is unlike anything they have ever seen before. A characteristic feature of the film, the innovative use of slow-motion camera movement is visually breathtaking, interspersed with stunning slow-motion portraits of various subjects throughout the journey. The film has a rhythm and a flow that dwindles like tides and a beat that pulses with a person's heartbeat.

Meaning in every frame

The art of creating a painting is to manipulate images with the camera, these images are combined, edited to create sentences, paragraphs and script pages simply by matching them. And although one can discuss the technic althe craftsmanship of these shocking and beautiful images, it doesn't do justice to the spiritual cinematic power of this work. Scenes of worshipers in Mecca, or the moon traveling across a desert sky, or workers in a poultry farm are visually dazzling, but that doesn't speak to the emotional power that pervades each frame.

Fricke knows that for all his computer-generated camera movements and time-lapse, sometimes leaning on a close-up of a Filipino prisoner's eye, a young African mother and child, or a lone geisha tear sliding down her cheek, is more emotionally powerful than that. or technologically spectacular. The director can also switch emotional beats in a matter of seconds, making us laugh at a man buried in a huge, gun-like coffin, and then stare in horror at the mass production of guns and bullets.

Reviews of the film "Samsara"

The picture tells the story of our world, a journey around the world, showing the great beauty and grotesque horrors of humanity, interspersed with stunning natural landscapes and the consequences of natural disasters. But still reviews about the film "Samsara" are somewhat contradictory. For some, it turned out to be a collection of vivid visual effects without any emotional upsurge, but for others it made an indelible impression, made you think about the meaning of life and God, society and technology. However, one thing viewers agree on is that Samsara is an amazingly beautiful and visually stunning film to get lost in.