Samsara (2012)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Samsara would dazzle you--if you have not seen Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi made some 35 years ago--where Fricke was the cinematographer and Reggio, a monk-turned-filmmaker, was the director. Reggio was an intellectual--Fricke is a mere craftsman. Fricke's images are eye candy without anything new to offer beyond Koyaanisqatsi.Fricke's shots of Mecca were outstanding in Samsara. He blatantly copies shots of Arizona that Koyaanisqatsi had done earlier. Skyscraper shots, indigenous folks were part of the Reggio equation that Fricke re-uses without the philosophy behind Reggio's choices.Further, Fricke's choice of music lacks the class of the Reggio-Philip Glass collaboration. Give me Koyaanisqatsi any day--it is one of my top 100 films ever made, with the same Fricke behind the camera but philosophic Reggio deciding what to do at each stage of filmmaking..

I just love it! It is incredible how movie with not a single word can say so much. Scenery is magical and music follows smoothly every scene. I think that somehow everyone can interpret this documentary as they want because it's not about what you hear someone says, but what you see with your own eyes and everyone of us sees world differently. I don't want to spoil but there are truly some good explanations how world works just if you are willing to really see it. I think it was worth all five years it took to make this movie. At least, my recommendation is to watch this documentary because I think you can see the world and learn a lot in less than two hours.

In 1993, filmmakers Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson presented a deeply moving portrait of features universal to all human societies, warned of ecological collapse, and depicted how technology was changing our lives in BARAKA. Shot on 70mm film, this was one of the most visually impressive films ever made, and its lack of any dialogue or narration allowed viewers to engage in their own individual reflections about the panorama on the screen. Two decades later, the team returned with SAMSARA, a sequel that wasn't really necessary.One reason that SAMSARA is not very good is that it often seems a shot-for-shot repeat of BARAKA. The filmmakers revisit many of the same locations (such as Thai prostitutes, a chicken-processing plant, home appliance factories, landfill gleaners). Again Buddhism, the Ka'aba and high church Christianity are depicted, but because the film does not go on to any other religions than what was on BARAKA, these rituals feel this time like cheap exoticism instead of unquenchable anthropological curiosity. SAMSARA also lacks the dramatic arc of BARAKA, coming across as a random succession of images instead of the journey from sacredness to horror and back that we found in its predecessor.That is not to say that SAMSARA is completely without interest. There is an astonishing clip of performance artist Olivier de Sagaza, and the freakish Dubai landscape is depicting in a detail that few (even those who have been there) have seen. SAMSARA is all in all a darker film, and while depictions of the wreckage of Katrina, a Wyoming family that are proud to own an arsenal of guns, and a wounded veteran may fail to really shock viewers in the West who have already been exposed to such images for years, scenes of garish funerals in Nigeria and Indonesian men making the rounds in a sulphur mine (even though they know it is killing them) are stirring and memorable. Of course the visuals are rich, and in Bluray format on my HD projector the film is just as stunningly detailed as its predecessor.However, SAMSARA lacks enough new things to say, it surprisingly doesn't offer continual rewards on rewatching, and just by the fact that it exists out there it potentially dilutes the impact of BARAKA, once a singular film. I was entertained enough to give this a 3-star rating, but I would still recommend BARAKA, and even for those who have seen and loved BARAKA, I would not recommend moving on to this film.

An unimaginable concept which entices the spirit of culture and tradition. The images displayed in the film resembles the art of nature and the world we live in. The movie embraces on the daily routine of several people across different countries with different cultures. It is a very good experience for the first timers who watch a film which involves no voice.The movie starts with the worship of Tibetan monks and their rituals and the movie continues with the beauty of nature and how the present world is ruining it. There was a scene for about 10 minutes that shows how the world is treating other species and most importantly animals for our meal. One should have a lot of courage to make a movie like this. I recommend this movie to everyone who has patience and courage to digest the facts about the world we are living in.