[critical] Samsara

Shot in 25 countries over 5 years, “Samsara” explores the wonders of our world. It is an extraordinary journey, a meditation without words.

Author’s Note

[rating:10/10]

• Release Date : march 27, 2013

• Directed by Ron Fricke

• Film american

• With unknown actors

• Duration : 1h42min

• Trailer :

Twenty years after the sublime Baraka, superb test hypnotic based on the different religions of the world, basing all of his speech… lack of speech (removing any dialogue or voice-over narration to let the images speak), Ron Fricke returns with another “documentary” (a term reducer for such a work) with the same methods. Basically, remove the weight of the words, there remains the shock of photos. He returns surrounded by the same team: Mark Magidson production and “scenario” (although there is not actually, the end result being the fruit of choice for editing from footage from of the most beautiful places in the world), Michael Stearns as a composer, assisted on vocals by Lisa Gerrard, ex-Dead Can Dance.

The long absence of the director on the screens is in part explained by the time required for shoot: 5 years for this new album, traveling the globe in search of the perfect spot, to wait for the right light, the right weather, permission to shoot… The entry into North Korea, for example, has not been possible, despite 2 years of negotiations. We will gratify nevertheless stunning canyons, burmese temples, the hall of mirrors… The landscapes are beautiful, but do not erase the human, that this is a training of shaolin monks the number of which is impressive, or artistic performance.

The film is shot in 70mm, a type of film are rare enough, but which produced images of great beauty. Digital can also hang the eye, but the director, aware of the length of its project, did not want to take the risk of being overwhelmed by the technology at the time of the exit. It is enough to review one of the films Dogma of Lars von Trier or his buddies scandinavia of the early 2000s, the innovative aesthetic of the time, and that pass for an ugly “DV of the supermarket” now, to understand his point of view.

This work atypical is a pure aesthetic pleasure, a film photographer, where the fracture of the eye lurks to each plan. Take the most beautiful plans Home, remove the voice-over teaching of the mustache, and you’ll get an idea of the result. What’s more, Ron Fricke, to him, doesn’t try to pretend to be an ecologist while he pollutes the Earth with great blows of the chopper (even if you buy a carbon balance by a cheque for the planting of trees to… HIS association!). The beautiful is obviously the part but the current state of the world is not rosy: there are also the horror of productivism in the diet of mass or gigantism absurd constructs of the Gulf. In 2008, NASA sent a piece of the Beatles toward the polar star. If we were to send a movie into space, it would be this one.