Baraka (1992)

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Baraka (1992) – R. Fricke

Ron Fricke was the cinematographer for the classic photography film, Koyaanisqatsi (1982), directed by Godfrey Reggio.  That earlier film had no plot but the theme of a “world out of balance” was clear and the music by Philip Glass was memorable and now immediately recognizable.  Although Reggio followed up with two additional qatsi films, Fricke was not involved.  Baraka was Fricke’s own “sequel” to the earlier work, although Baraka’s theme (or themes) is much less obvious.  Instead, this film (and the subsequent Samsara from 2011) is all about the images – and they are gorgeous, especially in this remastered blu-ray version.  However, without a clear indication of where each sequence was shot – and the images come from 24 different countries on 6 continents – viewers are left to speculate.  Therefore, we simply talked aloud to the movie (and each other) about the locations and the possible connections between sequences (cutting from a battery hen farm to Japanese commuters squashed into a train makes some kind of statement, I guess).  The music is a bit less compelling than that of Philip Glass but occasionally rises to the occasion.  All told, Baraka gives you a chance to be fully amazed by the wonders of this world and the varied people in it – circa the early nineties.  As such, we sometimes reflected upon whether all these wondrous things are still with us twenty-something years later.