Classic Flicks: A window on the world with Ron Fricke's Baraka

By Joseph Allencherril     9/2/10 7:00pm

Here's a quick linguistics lesson: In the context of this film, "baraka" refers neither to the female version of our current president's name, nor does it refer to my favorite Mortal Kombat character. In Judaism, the word signifies a ceremonial blessing. In Arabic, Swahili, Urdu, Persian and Turkish, it is "spiritual wisdom from God." The Sufi translation of baraka - also the translation given on the film's Blu-Ray cover - is "the thread that weaves life together." Brilliant: a multilingual pun in the title of the film alone.

The Sufi definition of the word is probably the one to which director and cinematographer Ron Fricke ascribes his wordless 1992 film, Baraka. At this point, one might suspect the film to be a pseudo-philosophical treatise on the circle of life, but Baraka defies being pigeonholed into any simple category.

Baraka is like Planet Earth - minus the exotic species and plus Homo sapiens - and raises the question: How different are we all from one another? This sprawling, globe-spanning film was shot at 152 different locations in 24 countries on the large 70 mm Todd-AO format with equipment that Fricke designed himself.

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The film's lack of words might be frustrating to some viewers, but Baraka was not produced as a run-of-the-mill nature or travel documentary for National Geographic Channel. Captions would only mar and detract from Fricke's pristine images of nature, man and technology, all of which are expertly juxtaposed across the continents.

Fricke is truly an Imagist poet of the cinema, possessing some hybrid of the photography skills of Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Early in the film, we witness the bath of an orangutan in a hot spring, the wink of an iguana and an ocean of clouds. Later, we painfully look on as a group of Indians sift through a garbage dump alongside hogs, cows and dogs.

Fricke's slow, watchful camera carefully peels away at the mysterious relationship between mankind, nature, technology and the eternal. He is unafraid of getting close and is masterfully able to record his subjects - be it a tribe of aborigines or a horde of commuters at Grand Central Station - in their natural state.

It is not difficult for a film with a pure cinematic approach to slip into the realm of kitschy cinematic gimmicks and clichés. Granted, almost anything appears interesting when viewed in fast or slow motion - such as when Fricke takes the viewer on a speed-tour of an area with time-lapse photography - but all of Fricke's devices only serve to underscore the vitality of his images.

In a nonverbal film like this, the music plays a major role. Even the silent films of old were not truly "silent"- what was lacking in words was made up for in musical accompaniment. Indeed the fusion of ethnic music by Michael Stearns and the hi-tech music of Dead Can Dance feature prominently and deepen the contrast between ancient and modern in the film.

This film has been so beautifully restored that film critic Roger Ebert has called it "the finest video disc I have ever viewed or ever imagined." But don't take his word for it (or mine, for that matter). For an unforgettable cinematic experience, you must obtain the Blu-Ray version and find or make friends who have a private home theater.

I would be remiss if I did not mention Fricke's work as cinematographer for other directors' movies - most famously for Koyaanisqatsi (1982), the first installment of Godfrey Reggio's famed Qatsi trilogy, and most interestingly for Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith.

Full disclosure: I am not myself a fan of Koyaanisqatsi, which felt much like a one and a half hour music video of repetitious Phillip Glass arpeggios - music set to film, rather than vice versa. Yet there is a good chance that other viewers may find existential pleasure in moments where I found myself falling asleep.

And, if you have 40 minutes, you might also want to take a look at Fricke's experimental meditation on time, Chronos (1985), which streams for free on www.hulu.com, as of this writing. It is also a good idea to be on the lookout for the release of Samsara, Fricke's sequel to Baraka, which is in production and expected to be in theatres by 2011. The time gap of 19 years between Baraka and Samsara ought to make one curious and excited about what grand cinematic feast Fricke has prepared for his audience now.

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