BARAKA !!!!!!

Without words this movie uses camera shots and music to show us the world, with an emphasis not on "where," but on "what's there." It begins with morning, natural landscapes and people at prayer: volcanoes, waterfalls, forests; several hundred monks chanting. Indian peoples apply body paint; various landscapes, churches, ruins, religious ceremonies, and cities thrumming with life and whole villages dance. The film moves to destruction of nature by showing us logging, blasting, and strip mining. Images of poverty, rapid urban life, and factories give way to war, concentration camps, and mass graves. Ancient ruins come into view, and then a river where people bathe and funeral burns take place. Prayer and nature return. A monk rings a huge bell; stars wheel across the sky The movie draws some surprising connections between various peoples and the spaces they inhabit, whether that space is a lonely mountaintop or a crowded cigarette factory. Some of these attempts at connection are more successful than others: for instance, an early sequence between the daily devotions of religion Tibetan monks, and Orthodox Jews, finding more similarity among their rituals than one might expect. And there are other amazing moments, as when sped-up footage of a busy intersection reveals a beautiful symmetry to urban life that could only be appreciated from the perspective of film. The lack of context can be frustrating, not knowing where a section was filmed, or the meaning of the ritual taking place, and some of the transitions are questioning. This fil used time-laps photography in order to capture the great pulse of humanity as it interacted in daily activity.