On Blu-ray at home with Lucía on 30 May late at night.
I don’t think Baraka is quite the profound film it wants to be. It is a remarkable collage of footage from around the world, showing the very developed side of some developed countries (e.g., Park Ave. and Grand Central Station in New York, Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo) and the very undeveloped side of the developing and underdeveloped nations (e.g., scavengers at a dump near Delhi, homeless in Brazil, a cigarette plant in Indonesia), along with various religious ceremonies and a few locations of great natural wonder (e.g., Ayers Rock, Iguazu), archaeological significance (e.g., the Pyramids, Angkor Wat), and at least one place of particular politico-historical import (Sonsam Kosal Killing Fields). There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to the selection of footage—it’s more a sampling of what humanity and the Earth has to offer.
The footage itself was very uneven. The night shots did not come off well, and while some sequences were brilliant short films in their own right, others didn’t seem like they belonged at all. There seemed to be an emphasis on the busyness and inhuman nature of Tokyo and New York as well as the poverty of Brazil and India, which, while certainly being very noticeable things about those countries, seemed to de-emphasize the incredible range of each. Perhaps I’m reading into it too much, but in some ways the film felt like it was revealing the incredible variety on this planet by diminishing the variety within each location and emphasizing the difference between them. This felt a little false, but perhaps it was the only feasible option given the scope of the film and its short running time. Also, showing the destitute in New York and the more developed parts of India might have contributed to a sense of homogeneity that I imagine the filmmakers were trying to avoid.
The film was definitely at its strongest when capturing religious ceremonies and architecture, as well as in capturing portraits of individual people. There’s something very reverent about the film’s approach to capturing rituals, and its coverage of religious settings is far more comprehensive than the coverage of nature, industrial, urban, etc. settings. And the portraits are just great.
Lucía: B-
Jun-Dai B+
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