Baraka

Rating:
Summary: My attempt to write a review
Review: ...If I could only choose one word however, it would be "perfection."

As stated in previous reviews, this is not a film, it as an experience, an journey both visually, intellectually and emotionally. Hearing about the quality soundtrack and the methods used to film (TODD-AO 65mm) I was expecting a DVD full of beautiful landscapes and various eyecandy from around the world. It turned out to be so much more, and perhaps the best value [money] can get you now.

Everything about this production is flawless. From Fricke's shots and use of cinematography, the segues he uses, the soundtrack, it all integrates seamlessly into one beautiful that cannot be described.

If you ever liked anything by Kubrick this will blow your mind. Even if you don't like Kubrick, you owe it to yourself to at least give it a try. Even if the deeply intellectual aspect of the movie does not appeal to you it gives the watcher a great view at every end of the Earth imaginable in exquisite detail.

Rating:
Summary: Strictly for the drum and bass heads!
Review: I have to say that while I first watched the movie the movie was a big drag--I just wasn't in the mood for that type of music. Well, I happen to have been watching it on my computer, so I turned the volume off on the movie, played an mp3 of DJ MF (DrumNBassics), which you can download off kazaa, or if not, write me and I'll send you a copy. I have to tell you the music perfectly complimented the music. I saw it all the way through, with the dj set having to be played about 2.5 times. A strange thing happened while I was listening: When I had to replay the set, that's when the film switched over to the Asian industrialized city. Whoa. Anyways, I recommend this movie for all the dnb heads out there. It's hard for us to get any thing real out there, and this movie is about as real as it gets. There's no dialogue or plot to this movie, but it's still more than worth watching. By leaving these things out, he frees himself in other ways. The landscape is amazing, the theme of the movie is strictly up to you, and the journey is well worth it.

Rating:
Summary: Five stars for the film, not the DVD...
Review: I saw this film in its original 70mm glory before I had any idea what it was. Not knowing anything about made it all the more spectacular. All I was told is 'you gotta see it'.

It is a symbiosis of sound and sight in a truly unique synthesis. One without the other leaves one with a sense of absence. Yet the two together are perfect. Michael Stearns provides a soundscape that buoys music from around the world. Add to this stunning scenery and fascinating people both at play and at work from around the world and you've got a delight for the senses. You really do just have to see it.

Personally I have to watch it when I'm alone as most people I know simply think the movie to be a bit odd as it is not your traditional 'movie'. Yet it is so much more than a documentary or some kind of advertisement for the Sierra Club or something. It is truly something to be experienced.

Now for the bad news. The picture quality on the DVD is spectacular, so too the songs. However, there are some moments of rather loud static in between the songs. It sounded to me at first like the wind or part of the film but then I realized it's not. It sounds like tape hiss (and I know for certain that it isn't my sound system). Perhaps bad transfer or a bad original, I don't know, but it is almost, though not quite, distracting enough to put a damper on it.

So five stars for the film and the music, four (even three) on the DVD.

Rating:
Summary: Realism at its finest
Review: Baraka is the most moving peice of realism I have ever experienced. The picture is crisp. The sound is amazing. It is uplifting, captivating, educating, and so real it hurts, at times. It is awesome, in the true sense of the word. It is a memorable montage of scenery woven with rythm. It is a dichotic assault on your senses, pleasure and pain in one package; an utterly unforgettable audio-visual stimulus. It is the ultimate brainchild of director Ron Fricke and musician Maichael Stearns.

Rating:
Summary: Just okay.
Review: I liked this DVD "okay". It was good, but not fantastic, and NOT in the same league as Koyaanisqatsi's visuals and music. I was hoping for something a lot like Koyaanisqatsi, and this is "somewhat" similar.

Instead of so many beautiful nature scenes, Baraka focuses more on the human element. Sometimes this is wonderful, like the monkey chant, and sometimes it disturbed me, like watching workers slice baby chicken's beaks off. From the title, which means "blessing", I didn't expect the darker elements to be there, and I didn't appreciate them. (I'm pretty sensitive to seeing animals in pain and/or treated as objects, so whole "chicken" section bothered me quite a bit) I don't see the blessing in mutilating baby birds... It is certainally real, but I just don't see how that fits in with the "blessing" theme I thought it was supposed to have judging from the film's description.

The music was also not nearly as rich and moving as it is in Koyaanisqatsi. I found myself bored more than once. Koyaanisqatsi holds me enraptured from start to finish, no matter how many times I see it.

But some portions of it are great, and I suppose I'm glad it's in my library, and on DVD so I can simply skip the parts that bother me. If I'd seen this at a friend's house first, I would not have bought it for myself, however.

Rating:
Summary: Look for the eyes that watch...
Review: Wonderful work. We are a strange creature, the product of
a overwhelmingly beautiful planet. Notice how the eyes of
those people who are living in the oldest cultures,
which often do not have large cities or stone building,
look at the camera, often from a slightly hidden place
and in looking directly at the viewer
seem to be looking at all we are about and all we are doing to ourselves and this planet
and waiting...waiting for us to realize what is already known.

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully penetrates right to the surface of things
Review: As a great fan of that poem of pure cinematography Koyaanisqatsi, I bought and viewed Baraka because it had been recommended as being along the same lines. Well, yes, some of the scenes (and the general concept) seem to be practically copied from Koyaanisqatsi, but in general, my reaction is that while Koyaanisqatsi is one of those rare works of pure inspiration, Baraka is simply a work of pretention. It could be an emblem for the New Age generation, in its skin-deep grasp of spiritual traditions, juxtaposed on the screen simply because some visual aspect of the previous scene resembles a visual aspect of the current scene, but with no appreciation of the underlying meaning of what is depicted within the cultural context. Even the sound track almost completely ignores any authentic musical heritage associated with the images shown. Where the cinematographer of Baraka seems to have been attempting to portray continuity or perhaps universality of the spiritual life and its artifacts and rites, in fact the result is little more than visual punning. It takes great commitment and devotion of years of study and practice to plumb the depths of any spiritual path, and no facile movie presentation of a string of pretty images like a smorgasbord of plastic hors d'oeuvres is going to reveal any important spiritual messages.
However, like New Age "fast food spirituality" fare, while there is nothing there to be taken very seriously, hopefully some pretty and stimulating images (extraordinarily beautiful photography!) may inspire curiousity in some viewers to look into the briefly presented phenomena in more depth. In this way, the movie may end up making a cultural contribution after all.
The 2 stars are for the gorgeous photography, and the missing 3 stars are for lack of interesting (or any) content.

Rating:
Summary: My son learned about the world...
Review: My three year old has learned so much of our world from this video. It's "why, what, where Dad?" This should be in every family's video collection. By the way, I'm a Republican, so HA!

Rating:
Summary: An exploration of cultural diversity
Review: Baraka is a 104 minute ecstatic musical/visual journey into the diversity of human culture and the common threads that bind us all (whether we like it or not): humans from different cultures and ethnic backgrounds, as well as humans to non-human animals.

Interestingly, and this is very different from Koyaanisqatsi, which draws striking contrasts between industrialized and non-industrialized cultures, Baraka takes some time to explore the connection humans have with animals.

In one scene we see a worker taking baby chicks from a metal chute. She is checking the chicks for gender: the female egg laying chicks go in one bin (more about them in a minute), and the male chicks go in another bin.

You see, 50% of the chicks born for egg-laying are male. These chicks will not lay eggs (obviously) and are not suitable as "broilers". What happens to the male chicks? They will be either be suffocated in a plastic bag and then thrown away as trash, or ground up alive and fed back to other animals.

In the same scene we see another worker cutting off the beaks of the female chicks with a hot knife. The chicks are "debeaked" since they will be spending their entire lives in a cage in close proximity to other hens - 5 to a cage about the size of a drawer. In such close proximity the hens cannot even flap their wings and would inflict severe damage on each other due to the natural pecking order if their beaks were intact. I think the viewer can tell by watching this that the process of losing a beak is quite painful for the baby chicks.

Unless you are a student of culture, you will likely not understand most of what you are seeing. However, this film will hopefully prompt a few to learn more about the world they live in.

Rating:
Summary: All anthropologists should watch this film
Review: I wish I had been exposed to Baraka as an undergraduate in cultural anthropology. It captures the diversity and sometimes sad irony of human cultural life and the natural world better than any other film I have ever seen. It is unforgetable and emotionally and intellectually powerful.