Page 1 of 3
This oblique doc showcases some of the most impressive cinematography of recent times....
MPI / 101 Minutes / 2011 / Rated PG-13 / Release Date: January 8, 2013
It's no surprise that Ron Fricke, director of the mystically beautiful Samsara, worked as Godfrey Reggio's director of photography on his film Koyaanisqatsi. Samsara, in a very base description, acts as a modern update of Reggio's beguiling travelogue, a meditation on what it means to be alive on this blue orb of ours in the 21st century.
Samsara's cinematography is so legitimately enthralling that one can watch it in awe without having any major connection to its narrative aim or symbology whatsoever. Reggio's Qatsi Trilogy offered a similar thematic cross-section, but Samsara's high-definition majesty is perhaps a bit less new-agey than those films and therefore straight-forward and direct. The names of the films are similar - Koyaanisqatsi is translated (loosely) as 'crazy life', Samsara is 'continuous flow' - but their feels are somehow disparate.
I actually found a deeper warmth at the heart of Samsara than any of Rodfrey's films provided. There's harshness here - the sequences of the movie that take place in meat processing plants are predictably difficult to stomach - but they fashion in which it's presented feels important, almost vital to the equation. Samsara is a wondrous, beautiful picture: viewers willing to eschew traditional narrative will find themselves awestruck by its singular cinematic grandeur.