Baraka

Baraka0623.jpg

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.

5 thoughts on “Baraka”

  1. 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?

  2. 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. 😉

  3. “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.

  4. 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.

Comments are closed.