Introduction and General Analysis
Baraka is a "silent" movie made in 1992 about the different parts of the world, their physical features and their cultures in general. It contains no dialogue, forcing the viewer to focus on the screen and the sometimes eerie sound design. My general view on this film is that it is like an "acid trip" of sorts that is meant to highlight the beauty in the diversity of our world and how in this diversity we can still be quite connected. It also has a message about how our modern society sometimes fails to see the beauty of the past and our surroundings and keeps on moving in a flurry around it to go on with our "progress", like when the monk walks through the street of that Asian city and everyone just walks around him, paying little head or just being annoyed by his presence.
Also, the environment is affected by progress in the way that the movie shows many amazing sights of the environment in the movie at the beginning but then moves on to more cityscapes and even trees being cut down and hills being blown up. I like the message conveyed and I feel that the movie is quite trippy, but it is interesting to note the "naturalist" ideology behind the film and how some of the movie's messages seem almost outdated, if not just out of current vogue. It is about the negative effects of modernization and deforestation (as well as general environment abuse), which are topics that are still important today, but now such issues seem more "commercialized", as if they are such a part of life, like "going green" that they are almost unnoticeable, but this movie brings up such issues again, instead of about things like the evils of the exploitation of natural resources by world powers like in Avatar, a movie with a similar earthy tone that is more recent. Later on in the movie it involves more of the negative effects on humans with the depiction of genocide in a genuinely scary way, focusing not on the actions of the genocide but instead what has been left behind, emphasizing the humanity of each person killed by showing their photographs. I am not sure what the end of the movie is, so it is hard to judge what exactly I believe the film makers want us to take away from the movie as a whole, but I think they want to inspire an appreciation for life and perhaps give some insight and hope for how we can change the world for the better through increased unity as people as a whole, not just as separate cultures.
(some of #3 is mentioned in this part)
Questions Answered
1. I think that the movie is named Baraka because the film seems to be meant to give a "breath" of fresh air into the human culture, as is to tell people to take a deep breath and look at the world around you in such a time of globalization and modernization. This is sort of like how the monkey at the beginning looks very contemplative; the shot lingers on the monkey for a very long, almost uncomfortable time, forcing us to take the "strange" situation in, to "breathe in" the atmosphere. This long moment is trying to make us breathe and contemplate our lives in comparison to everyone else in the movie, to take time to respect the world for what it is and enjoy the differences around you and step back from "progress" for a little while seems to be the message in this movie. Also, progress is not always progress, for in our modern time we have been able to cause much destruction with our "progress" in technology, like genocide and the destruction of the environment. The title really shows an ancient mysticism, the awe of life that has always existed on earth because of its amazingly good and horrible attributes.
2. It is representing a critique of the modern world for it is kind of saying that we live our lives at too fast of a pace, too out of reach of nature. A lot more time is spent on shots of people in more traditional environments, a lot of time spent on each of their individual faces for the most native people. As the movie starts to get further away from traditional environments, like in the slum parts of the city where people do stop and think for a while, are more "slow going" like the more traditional people, less time is spent on their individual faces; we spend more time on their faces in groups, but that time spent is still less time that the time spent on the faces of the people in more traditional groups. In the big cities, mostly New York we see much less of the individual, with the shots time lapsed really fast to place no focus on one individual person but instead the flurry of the collective. There is no time spent on the individual or even small groups; this demonstrates how disconnected the "modern " world is from person to person.
3. I think I have basically explained this before.
4. This absence of dialogue is really important because it means that there are no subtitles, that everyone in the world can see the same film presented in the same way, weeding out the subjective translations and meanings of words. It also brings everyone together in way that it speaks in a way most people no matter where they are from or their education level is: through pictures.
5. Culture and city often involve a lot of people, a lot of rich contrasting colors while the nature involves cool colors with little contrasting colors; it is of course very natural. In both, there is sometimes a lot of movement, like with the clouds and the people in New York, and but often there is not, like in the water reflecting the sky and the people staring at the screen. The main contrast in movement is the sometimes people will move a lot and in very coordinated ways, like with those Asian men and their coordinated movement that probably helped inspire the similar movement in the movie Avatar.
6. This juxtaposition of the monk after all of the cigarette packing seems to show how modern industry, modern society, has taken a departure from the past, from the culture of the past, and now leaves it behind and ignores it, even if it is still an inexorable part of society. Spirituality is still present despite the flurry of modern day and it has the ability to coexist and should be accepted, but sometimes people are "too busy" to do so.
7. This representation of the poor shows us that much of the world is poor, no matter where they come from. It is something that is shared across countries, but it is not a good thing like much of what the world shares in its diversity of culture and race.
8. Much of the music seems to echo, as if the tracks are played "into" each other, a nice use of stereo it would seem (I am not sure if that is correct, it just seems to be so). The music where the people were all singing in their own languages stood out to me, for it was eerie since I did not understand it and it was very booming and echoing in the way that I mentioned before. The transitions were really nice when it went from a lot of movement to no movement, like all of the men swaying all together like in Avatar then suddenly changing to a still mountain/volcano top with only a bit of movement pulling into the mountain from the side. As a side note throughout the movie I really liked the way the camera kind of moved in on the side of the still pictures, like with that one white or tan building towards the beginning of the movie; it is more interesting that moving straight into the shot (it is revealed more artistically).
9. We probably watched this film because it was somewhat trippy and it forces you to focus on its editing style and "background" sound design. I am not sure what you mean by vision, but I guess if a more traditional movie wanted to imitate the effect of this movie. it could do it to some extent, but more of the traditional barriers like language and the subtlety of meaning of words in each culture, but a similar effect could be made with a protagonist touring the countries, but that also leaves less of the scenarios up to the viewer to interpret. A sense of awe could still be made, for the cinematography is still amazing in any movie, so it would still affect that attraction to nature all humans have. I think that I still do want to travel, but I would probably still chose more commercial places, which is not exactly what this movie is trying to emphasize.
Conclusion
Baraka is a movie that has power in its epic undertaking, but simple basic idea: show the world as it has been and how it is. In this idea it succeeds. I wonder how the "sequel" Samsara will be, with the changes in this world since 1992.
No comments:
Post a Comment