THE FILM “SAMSARA” – A DIFFERENT VISUAL EXPERIENCE

A key feature of the unusual yet very unmissable film “Samsara” is the mandala made by Buddhist monks in India and the fact they treat their art in a transitory way which is delectable and sad at the same time. Beautiful and stunning ladies dressed in traditional Beiijing costume adds to the rich tapestry of enchantment and diverse visual excitement and provocative scenes which  the film embraces.

Samsara was made over a 4 year period in 25 countries across 5 continents. It excludes words and dialogue almost entirely but there is musical backing in various forms, intoxicating drumming assembled by Lisa Gerrard (who is from  Dead Can Dance) Marcello De Francisci and Michael Stearns.

The film focuses in some ways on the human condition, and its needs and practices, how the soul is satiated on a daily basis, whether spiritually, artistically or more elementarily, by food or material acquisitions.  One piece of footage features African children on a huge rubbish tip which has its fair share of flies, going through it to try and find anything at all they can claim to use again.  Another piece shows an enormous chicken farm, with a machine which sweeps the birds into a conveyor belt and then portrays the vast factory where they are dissected and prepared for people to cook and consume.  There is also footage of cows being prepared for milking and being milked.

Don’t think that this film doesn’t keep demonstrating definitive beauty as well.  It does – in large quantitites.  Buddhist monks are shown worshipping and exotic Far Eastern girls dressed in “tribal” make up and costumes for example.  Landscapes and city scapes are featured for the audience to draw breath and perhaps feel awed at these pictures portraying perhaps how our life cycle mirrors the rhythm of the planet.

One part of the “story” would thrown any member of the audience – the human condition of the office worker is demonstrated in an abstract form where our man daubs himself madly with huge clods of soggy clay and then proceeds to mock himself in a mad fit using red and black paint.  I am unsure what this is supposed to communicate but sense that this could be an attempt to express the inner frustrations of someone tied to his desk for too long and how it is eating him up inside.

Ron Fricke directed and Mark Magidson produced, co-edited and co-wrote. Fricke conceived the film as a “guided mediation on the cyle of birth, death and rebirth” and Magidson,  in the course of the last 3 decades has taken crews to over 50 countries in search of profound and “one of a kind” imagery, and also worked on Chronos (1985) and Baraka (1992) with Fricke. Worth a watch for the sheer magic and originality of the use of the most popular media worldwide.

Penny Nair Price