Two Parts of a Sublime, Lonely Triple Feature

266) Samsara (2011) Dir: Ron Fricke Date Released: August 24, 2012 Date Released: August 24, 2012 Date Seen: August 25, 2012 Rating: 4.5/5

268) Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) Dir: Joe Dante Date Released: June 15, 1990 Date Seen: August 25, 2012 Rating: 4.25/5

Imagine my disappointment when I watched Compliance between the two aforementioned films, eesh. 

Anyway, I spent the evening at the Landmark Sunshine recently. I was mostly alone, though I did see some friends a few rows ahead of me at Samsara, and was lucky enough to meet up with some others for Gremlins 2. But it was a lonely night at the movies, sitting in crowded auditoriums for two films and then a fairly empty one for a final third. It was also great fun, if that makes any sense. 

It probably doesn't, so let's go with that assumption, and explicate from there, or whatever.

Samsara is fairly similar to Baraka except that Fricke's sophomore feature is much more about the slow, encroaching effects of time on man-made stuffs. Sky-scrapers, sculptures, subways, all of the monuments we make to artificially pay homage to nature: all of these things age. The subtle cracks in the eyes of humanoid statues, the slow trickle of rainwater down a leaf, the fault lines in a rock-wall, the intricate works of spiritual art we ritualistically make and then undo--it's the cycle of life, according to Fricke. 

Kino Eye, Mondo Eye

245) Baraka (1992) Dir: Ron Fricke Date Released: September 24, 1993 Date Seen: August 3, 2012 Rating: 4.5/5

As I was watching Baraka, and having my shit blown away by it, I couldn't help but think that director Ron Fricke had somehow seamlessly combined two disparate traditions. It's too easy to say that Baraka is similar to Koyaanisqatsi, especially since Fricke worked on that film. Actually, I was thinking of:

1: Goona Goona: I think it's fitting that Baraka is showing as a midnight movie at the Landmark Sunshine in two weeks or so. Bear in mind: I'm always bitching about how conservative the tastes of the Sunshine's midnight movie programmers are. I mean, I have a reason, OK? These are the guys that show The Goonies at midnight and they used to be the guys that showed A Boy and His Dog. This shit matters, ok?!

But Baraka is a good choice thanks in no small part to the exploitative heritage it comes from. Fricke's ideology and approach may be drastically different from the sleazy, pseudo-educational ethnographic documentaries that emphasized naked spear-chuckers, human sacrifices, dead bodies and tattooed/pierced skin. 

But you can't have Baraka without that tradition: the footage of an ossuary, which is conflated with footage from a Holocaust museum and then a concentration camp? Or how about the images of a human body being burned near the Ganges, complete with a close-up of a pained look etched on a corpse's face? Or how about that shot of the same body burning where you can clearly see the body's foot burning, the flesh flaking off its bone? Or even the scenes of naked Amazon natives and their elaborate body art? If that's not the distant relative of Goona Goona and the Mondo movies that followed it, I don't know what is. Just look at the film's original tagline: "a world beyond words." Sounds pretty exotic, huh?