Sunday, October 21, 2012

Movie Review: Samsara

Samsara is defined as the indefinitely repeated cycles of birth, misery, and death caused by karma. In the new movie by director Ron Fricke, shot over five years on five continents, misery is juxtaposed with beauty, both natural and manmade, in scenes from twenty-five countries. Music is nearly the only sound in the film, but much is communicated by the looks in the eyes of many of the humans depicted in a wide variety of activities, from ritual dances, to prayer, to digging through dumps for objects of value. In today's instant travel internet world, there isn't anything in "Samsara" that we don't know already exists, but some of the images are shocking just the same. I came away moved by the intelligence I saw in the eyes of even the most abjectly poor subjects, overwhelmed by a hint of the sheer volume of production, and consequent consumption of resources and subsequent waste, required to keep our species alive, and awed by human diversity and creativity, both in art and the expression of our everyday lives. Taking away answers provided by religion, what purpose and meaning does our species have on this planet? Are we even remotely capable of achieving any kind of compassionate balance with other sentient beings or are we on a course of inevitable destruction resulting from our own behavior? "Samsara" doesn't answer these questions but gives its audience plenty to think about. It's worth the time and money to come up with questions of your own.

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