Marval Movie

"What do you like about the desert?"
"Its very clean"
-Laurence of Arabia-

Before films had sound, they had to rely on the image that they put on the screen to interest and invoke the audience, since the introduction of sound movies have had to put less emphasis on the image and get us involved on the speaking words and the images have grown less and less impressive and ambitious.

Samasara knows this and makes up for the lack of great visuals for the last sixty years and puts them all together in an incredible unforgettable experience that will shake, enlighten and owe you all throughout.

The film doesn't have a single moment of dialogue (even The Artist can say that) and I wouldn't have it any other way. The music is chosen perfectly fitting with the mood of the images and the movement of the camera. When the soundtrack comes out I intend to buy it.

Director Ron Fricke is a man with vision, in the coarse of this film he seeks to show the audience nothing less than the whole world and  it all integrates as one magnificent tapestry. Samsara covers as much ground of the planet as I would have thought possible, everything from the desert, African tribes to the sparkling metropolis of Hong Kong is covered.

Samsara is, I suppose, a Documentary but if when you hear that word you think of talking heads or David Attenborough narrating over everything then you'd be wrong about this. The movie is more about the mood and tone, as-well as having no real narrative to speak of, or if there is its not spelled out, the images are shown, the audience appreciates and then it moves on to the next.

Before this movie I would have said that my favorite Documentary would have been "The D Tour" or "Crumb", but I think that this has taken the top billing as my favorite and I think that only time will reveal it to be a masterpiece.

The movie has one unforgettable image after another, it would take up the whole review to describe or analyze but they vary from the extraordinary, to the every day, to the plain uncomfortable. One of the most fascinating images is that of temple monks sitting round a stone table with two tubes and slowly tapping out different colored powders to form a magnificent mural, they can only tap the tubes lightly so that the right amount of powder comes out and by the end when there done and a masterpiece stands before them, they just wipe it all out.

Documentaries usually don't offer the best camera work, there usually a bit crude so that they can just get the shot (so to speak) Samsara has some of the best camera work I have ever seen, not most but every single shot is planed and executed with magnificent grace and scale. I know that this film wont win the Academy Award for Best Picture or Best Director, even though I think it should, but it might have a shot at best foreign film, but if this film does not win for Best Documentary or Cinematography, then there is no point in the Academy Awards because then its obvious that there just not doing there jobs.

This world has a lot of people in it and there are a lot of sights to see and people to meet, Samsara gives us a taste of all that the whole world has to offer.  We need to get out and see these great sights that are there and meet these people and be aware of the problems that are in it. Samsara is one of the most essential movies ever.

Rating: 4 stars out of 4

Note: When I went to see this film in the theater, I went with high ambition, after seeing the trailer.  The film started at eight, there was an image on the screen until eight twenty five and when it did start for the first five minutes or so they still played that annoying music loop that plays before the film. They apologized and restarted the film.  Samsara is played on traditional celluloid film and not digital, I like that, I want it like that, my concern is that maybe since Digital projection, the projectionists have maybe become a bit lazy or forgotten how to use the traditional projection. Then again maybe I'm wrong and there was a flaw with the projector that simply couldn't be helped, but this gives me concern. Out of curtsy I'm not going to name the theater.