Samsara Premiere at the Santa Barbara Film Festival
Samsara
Samsara, a Sanskrit word translating to “continuous flow,” pertains to the cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth – a continuous wheel of life that all of humankind is connected to and exists within. It is this title that the highly regarded director Ron Fricke has chosen for his latest non-verbal film since the acclaimed 1992 Baraka. Like Baraka, Fricke’s mastery of time-lapse photography and large format cinematography come out in full force, along with a deeply moving soundtrack guiding us through our visual journey. But unlike Baraka, Samsara’s focus is almost completely human; in contemplating the creation and destruction we encounter everywhere in the world, we cannot avoid our role in the process. Samsara is quite a film to experience. You will be delighted, disgusted, mesmerized, horrified, and, most importantly, will contemplate life on this planet. As the filmmakers describe it, Samsara is intended to be a “guided meditation on the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.”
The movie opens with three young Balinese girls dancing in full traditional dress – their eyes wide, faces stoic. Fricke’s attempt is to capture life as it truly is. Extreme close-ups are used throughout the film, and rarely do we see a smile. These dancing, vibrantly dressed girls are juxtaposed with the images of mummified-looking faces – not only the dead, but the long dead. This continuous cycle of life and death, creation and destruction, plays out throughout the course of the film. Shot in over twenty countries, we are transported to awe-inspiring and beautiful locations, along with some of the most devastating.
We are taken to modern places bustling with life along with dusty, ancient ruins. Exotic Burmese temples jutting out of the jungle, glowing with life in the sun; destroyed New Orleans homes, the removal of life all you can gather from the images. We see rushing waterfalls and majestic sand dunes followed by sped-up fast-paced freeways and city lights. The destruction of one image (nature) leads to the creation of another (freeways, skyscrapers, and factories).
Hinduism, Buddhism, and other Indian religions believe an end to samsara can be reached. This mental state, known as nirvana, translates to a “blowing out” - distinguishing the fires of hatred, greed, and delusion characterized by samsara. It is not until we are released from the suffering of samsara that we can truly be free. Many of Fricke’s sequences seem to perfectly encapsulate this description of samsara (hatred, greed, delusion, and ultimately, suffering).
For example, we are shown a room full of sex dolls, followed by Asian prostitutes in bikinis, numbers pinned to their underwear. A close-up of one of the girls is nearly identical in expression and appearance to a close-up of a sex doll. The conclusion to this sequence is what appears to be a Japanese concubine dressed in traditional garb. A close-up of her face reveals a single tear slowly falling down her white powdery cheek. In a Q&A after the film, producer Mark Magidson revealed that this was not contrived; the woman’s tear was spontaneous and hauntingly real.
One of the most horrific images in the film is that of a performance artist sitting at a desk with a jar of mud. He covers his face with the mud and proceeds to grotesquely and violently reconstruct it – poking out where his eyes would be with a pencil, re-drawing his mouth in crude, scary lines across his face, tearing at what he has created and starting again. It is hard to watch without cringing. This is yet another glimpse into the idea of samsara – a man dehumanizing his face, creating it and destroying it using emotion and self-inflicted violence. He has become, with his own hands, his worst nightmare.
Another sequence reveals chicken, cow, and pig factories – with the gut-wrenching visuals one would imagine. This is followed by a fast-forward speed sequence of food factories – the meat being methodically cut for consumption; workers flipping burgers in a fast food joint; Americans stockpiling their carts with bulk food and grocery items, including burgers and meat. A group of obese Americans sit in a fast food restaurant devouring trays of towering burgers. Lastly, an obese stomach is being analyzed and marked by a plastic surgeon, who prepares for surgery.
Some of the most memorable and mesmerizing images were: a dancing scene among Filipino prison inmates, a wide shot of what appears to be an infinity of white-clad Muslim men praying at Mecca, and lines of Chinese boys seeming to go on forever, all doing some sort of synchronized martial arts moves. We feel the magnitude of the sheer numbers of human beings inhabiting this planet; the diversity, yet at the same time the interconnectedness. Piles of trashed computers, children working in landfills, colossal mounds of garbage and waste – we are all connected to this earth and the ever-turning wheel of samsara, whether we like it or not, and through the choices that we make, we are either contributing to its eventual salvation or demise.