Samsara (2011)
MacOS Samsara, the screensaver.
Presentation:
This film will always be in the shadow of Koyaanisqatsi no matter how much Ron Fricke tries to stray from Godfrey Reggio. Samsara is frequently lauded as having some of the most beautiful imagery in cinematography. Although the image quality, production and color fidelity is higher than Koyaanisqatsi, the images are worse. The sharper imagery in cinemascope allows for an expansive beauty, but only in the shallowest sense. It’s digital looking with HDR reminiscent of something out of a National Geographic doc rather than film. I don’t like how the highlights are rendered and they looks unnaturally lit for certain parts. The moonlight scenes are uncanny, as I wondered if it really does get that bright. Both movies still capture the desert better than Dune or Lawrence of Arabia, though the music here is worse. The repetitive rhythm of cuts feels inorganic in pace like a slide show similar to your MacOS screensaver. The most egregious sin is there seems to be artificial lighting for some scenes and even worse, posing and choreography that ultimately makes this film fraudulent. The whole purpose of a documentary is authenticity and the moment you add performative elements (and blatantly obvious ones) it ends up losing its credibility, as long as you’re paying attention to its agenda. The biggest problem is without a structure of beginning, middle and end, these ultimately become images with no connective tissue. As a result, you can get 80% of the movie experience just from looking at Filmspice stills.
Analysis:
The best parts of this film are the sand painting and juxtaposition of Shanghai skyline with dirt poor villages. The African arc is gorgeous and the food arc was also pretty convincing in making me want to go vegan for 90 minutes. However, the film was ruined for me when the man rubbed clay over himself and then people started posing for the camera.
Conclusion:
This film is an indecisive montage in visuals and broad social commentary. The film is edited poorly with loosely correlated scenes, some unfitting and others borderline random. By attempting to reach for everything, it ends up with nothing. You can’t expect the audience to care about every 5 second social issue in one film. There needs to be focused direction. Fricke instead focuses on shallow imagery and this ultimately becomes of a parody of itself, instead of its supposed critique on consumerism and artificiality. The exotic/global aspect of this film is appreciated, but feels like peacocking on an obscenely beautiful scale. It seemingly competes with itself or some Guinness World Record for how many gorgeous visuals a director can virtue signal in 90 minutes. I almost hate this film, but perhaps it is just disappointment. I definitely don’t like it, but there are aspects to appreciate and it does have broader appeal, which is not exactly in the best interest of its message.
Recommendations
Level 0 of the liminal basement.