Baraka (1992)

Today's film is Baraka, a non-verbal documentary.  It's not just a film; it's moving art.  I watched it in 1080p hd and it was awesome.

Baraka is a Sufi word meaning "a blessing, or as the breath, or essence of life from which the evolutionary process unfolds".  The filmmakers shot this film using 70mm in 24 countries on 6 continents.  First, it starts off with images of nature, showing the desert, the Himalayas, and the beautiful night sky.  Then, it shows more primitive peoples as they perform their religious rituals, the busy people of the cities, and eventually it comes full circle to show the barren natural world again.  However, it is a film that has to be experienced and it is hard to describe a wordless film with words.

Sometimes the film was frustrating because I couldn't figure out what location they were filming.  But that's the point.  It's about a day on Earth so it doesn't matter particularly where on Earth we're watching.  I liked the time lapse photography that compared the Japanese subway system to chicks being sorted down a grinder.  However, it did invoke bad memories.  We used to live a few miles away from a commercial chicken farm and it had a unique smell.  The smell.  One never forgets a smell like that.  If you are wondering where the chicks are traveling to, they're being sorted.  The females, prized for their egg-laying abilities, are being kept while the males are going down a grinder to be turned into feed. The images of the city people make me wonder if we are traveling through life too fast and need to slow down.  The music is more quickly paced and rhythmic in this section.

In the beginning and final sections, the music is slower and grand.  Grand is the best way to describe it.  I love the images of nature, and especially the ones of the night sky.  I love those images much more than the images of anything humans have built.  I mean, it's taken Earth over 4 billion years to get this beautiful so I'm going to enjoy it.  However, I do want to show one image I liked; it's so shiny!  I have no idea what or where this is - but shiny!  (And I don't mean that in a Firefly sense, I mean it's actually shiny).

This film is so beautiful and shows people from all over the world following everything from their day to day lives and occasional celebrations, along with images of nature, set to amazing music.  I will give this film a 10/10.