| | Director Ron Fricke took an extremely high-resolution camera around the world, filming amazing sights, both natural and cultural, and somehow edited them together with subtle traditional instrument music into a spellbinding feature-length array of sounds and images. One of the only movies ever filmed in this particular brand of 70mm, every frame of Baraka is jaw-dropping in clarity, detail, and beauty in its new Blu-ray release. From snow monkeys bathing in Japanese hot springs, to a packed cigarette factory in southeast Asia, to an eclipse in Hawaii, funeral rites in India, bustling city scenes in Japan and New York, and on and on and on, everything he shows you is stunning and poignant.
One repeated trick he uses is having someone, seen in their native home, just stand there and stare at you for a good long time--right straight into the camera. This can no longer be called strictly a documentary, then, since he is manipulating the subjects--and since it doesn't have any stated subject or purpose, aside from abstracts like "time," etc. That bothered me at first, particularly since the choice of some historically sensitive sites seemed geared toward an unspoken commentary against oppression, industrialization, and that sort of thing, but what he's really doing is finding what is beautiful--even in a vast South American dump--fixing it directly in front of his camera, and letting its appearance speak for itself, straight into that deep non-verbal semi-conscious part of your mind--and it does. |
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