Baraka, a Sufi word somewhere in the neighborhood of “blessing” is vested with just about as much meaning as arete. So when I checked out Baraka [tons of screenshots] from the library, I expected a complicated movie. It is complicated in the fact that it is and isn’t complicated.
The cinematography is wicked awesome, and if the film seems a bit too smitten with “look at the strange foreigners“ness, the overall point seems to be universal. I believe the film is meant to serve a political function as a wake-up call, and a challenge for responsibility. We see cigarettes being made in sweatshops, fluffy yellow chicks getting their beaks fried, and the Kuwaiti oil field fires of Gulf War I. We see the glories and vastnesses of both earth and sky and space, and throughout we see strangers going about their business.
And their business, our business as a species, seems to be getting noticed, having attention paid to us. Or at the very least, making ourselves feel that attention is being paid to us. Whatever it takes to not feel insignificant. Everything we see humans doing in Baraka seems to be focused on getting our gods to love us [religious ceremonies] or being as successful as possible as a convoluted means to having other people notice us [city life] or doing something “permanent”, leaving a legacy behind [ruins, strip mines, oil fires]. Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes.
And apparently we keep missing the obvious. We are the ones who have to pay attention to others. Throughout the film the only people who seem completely secure within their selves are children. Children tend to pay more attention to their world than to their selves. There is a Zen monk who also seems secure in his own being, but he sits immobile through the whole movie. His meditation takes on a pitiful air, it takes all of his being to accept his insignificance, whereas the children find all things equally significant, and can move and act while they are at it.
I don’t know why the film is called Baraka, unless it is irony. It is subtly secular and liberal, which aren’t bad things. But they might get turned a bit sinister when bound up with the despair and good-ole days fallacious nostalgia and somewhat touristy feel that also fill the film. It seems that many people find this film inspiring, but it made me a bit sad. Thankfully, it is ambiguous enough that someone could easily write the exact opposite review to the one I just wrote.
I sort of think I addressed that when I said we’re too busy trying to get people to pay attention to ourselves to pay attention to other people, but I guess I didn’t hit hard enough on that…
I suppose I shouldn’t have said “everything.”
Why are you unwilling to say what you think about the movie?
yeah…i think i might be that someone to write the exact opposite. one of my friends brought it for me to watch and he was ecstatic over it. i was a bit hesitant to give it a chance, considering it would never live up to the the build up.
i did not jump up and down over it as he nearly did, but there was quite a peacefulness that gathered within me while watching it. it seemed very meditative…a feeling i ‘used’ to get as a child during mass. interesting that you felt despair. how ‘neat’ that films affect people in such different ways. but yes, if i were one to write reviews, i would. and disagree i would. but i’m not a reviewer. i just write songs. 😉
You might enjoy reading a small book call “The Way of The Sufi” by Indris Shah. I read it many years ago.
“Everything we see humans doing in Baraka seems to be focused on getting our gods to love us [religious ceremonies] or being as successful as possible as a convoluted means to having other people notice us [city life] or doing something “permanent”, leaving a legacy behind [ruins, strip mines, oil fires].”
Which of these were the people digging through garbage and making cigarettes doing?
I love this film, and far be it from me to say that anyone missed the point of anything, but I think you missed the point.
Now you’ll ask: “What’s the point, then?” I won’t respond.
Baraka is a film of man’s place in the universe as he or she is restricted by living only in a geographical location, time and culture of his own. Only the mind of man in its ethical and spiritual quest can transcend this limitation of physical restrictions. And in that interminable space of vast thought, he finds his sadness by recognizing the limited extremities of his mind and of himself. In that, the most primitive and the most technologically advanced man, humans and animals such as chickens in treadmill or people getting off the subway lose all distinctions. Baraka is gloriously a sad movie.