Baraka Impressions

Before seeing the movie I knew Baraka was supposed to be powerful, and  Ryan Poe liked it. Not a lot to go off of, but I was pretty excited to see it none the less. 

Note: This contains spoilers about what is shot in the movie

It started with a shot of a mountain, a beautiful scene in great quality Bluray video. It then changes to a shot of buildings built dangerously close to the edge of a cliff, going in, Baraka shows how this group of monks lived. 

Tibetian Monks, African Tribes, and the traffic flow of Hong Kong were all depicted in the movie, each showing the very different differences between cultures, and how they lived with their environment and the people around them. 

 One scenee was of an African tribe making music. A Group sitting, chanting various noises. And with the music came dancing. Late in the scene they were having a back-and-forth where half would stand and the other would fall back onto their backs. The way it went back and forth was mesmerising, and how I viewed it was depicting a battle.

My favorite part was the way it showed Hong Kong: a  sped-up video of pedestrians and cars moving through the streets. This was a more obvious example of people reacting to their environment, and looked really cool. 

Parallel to Hong Kong was an assembly line. The line had baby chicks pushed together as a crowd through the line as their wings were plucked and they were tossed into a funnel. And later the result: plump chickens kept together in pens. How the movie shot it didn’t show an opinion about the subject, but didn’t hold anything back either, and let you form your own thoughts. 

Baraka held back nothing. Some scenes were hard to view, but impossible not to. I won’t get into nitty gritty details, but the Athenaeum was silent besides the ocassional gasp.

Baraka certainly achieves its goal, and shows human ecology in a beautiful and thought provoking manner. I haven’t heard anything but good responses from the people who attended the movie, so I suggest you find your way to a copy and watch it, if you didn’t go to this showing that is.

And after you’ve done that (or before), go to RIFF’s next screening, an episode of This American Life, “John Smith.” Baraka went well, so come (re)join the fun! 

The screening will be May 15th at 8 PM. Head over to http://thisamericanlife.eventbrite.com/ to reserve your pay-what-you-can ticket.