Back in my college film class there was this pretentious surfer dude who could never shut up about Baraka, and I ended up never seeing it out of spite. In retrospect this might have been a mistake, as Oscilloscope just released a new trailer for Samsara, from Baraka director Ron Fricke, and I think my retinas just got type two diabetes. Jesus Christ, I almost puked from the majesty (happened to Walt Whitman all the time). The opening shot in the banner pic (I’d highly recommend clicking to enlarge) would be enough for me to watch the whole thing, but pretty much every shot in the trailer is equally majestic. According to the trailer, it was shot entirely in 70 mm over the course of 25 years. It opens August 24th, and so far my only hesitation in seeing it is that it’s going to make my copies of National Geographic look like truck stop bathroom fart limericks.
[HD version at Apple]
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So this is like Planet Earth or is it a movie? I watched without sound.
I hate to be THAT guy, but Baraka was simply amazing. Possibly one of the greatest things I’ve ever watched…as long as you were high as a kite. It is the reason God invented pot.
It’s legitimately awesome…except that time I got the fear, right when the chicken egg scene was kicking in, then it was the most terrifying 30 minutes of my entire life. “I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE EGGS ARE SAYING MAN! I DON’T KNOW! Oh my God…is that old woman sweeping? Why are YOU SWEEPING?!?!?!? WEREN’T YOU JUST A WHIRLING DIRVISH A SECOND AGO? Is this real life?”
Baraka is the poor man’s Koyaanisqatsi.
(Flees through traffic in extreme high-speed motion.)
PFFFFFFT. Koyaanisqatsi is the amateur opening act for Baraka.
HA! Mike you heathen. Baraka is to Koyaanisqatsi what Powaqqatsi is to Cars 2. [PLEASE GOD don't let them ask me to try and rationalize that, just let me look smart for once?]
I thought those monks were playing a board game at 1:12.
Truck stop bathroom fart limericks are rather tasteless and generally unimaginative, really a waste of reading time. Truck stop bathroom fart haikus, on the other hand, while rare, are rather exquisite.
I would be remiss not to include a fart haiku example. Here goes:
Silent but deadly
I feel wetness down below
Did I shart or not?
A flatulent driver named Gordon,
pulled in to a stop outside Jordan,
He ate six burritos,
a bag of Doritos…
The army has set up a cordon.
Tarsem Singh thinks this needs a better story. Ironic.
I just don’t see how a super lush, 70mm treatment can possibly benefit or add to the experience when you’re doing a biopic of a fictional character with knives coming out of his forearms and teeth like a Hairy Angler. Maybe I’m just lacking vision on this one.
Good lord those little asians breed like rabbits, eh what?!
Baraka is the motherfucking TRUTH. I have such deep, unfettered love for that film. I saw this trailer in IMAX before Dark Knight Rises, and I lost my shit.
I’ve also caught Baraka in a 70mm theater screening here in Seattle a while back….gorgeousness and gorgeousity, a silvery wine floating through a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now.
Oh AND that amazing “Dead Can Dance” song that plays during the horribly depressing ‘homeless/prostitute’ section of Baraka….when I saw The Mist in the theaters, I started jumping up and down in my seat like a fucking child when Darabont freaked it. I am something of a fledgling filmmaker, and I’d always had big plans to use that exact song at the end of a depressing film, to really drive the point home and leave everyone in tears….and Frank Darabont just beat me to it. I was ecstatic and bitter.
And then Sir Hacksalot Zack Snyder ripped off Frank Darabont in that fuckin owl movie, and shockingly it wasn’t as effective.
THE END
There’s something in the mist!
Oh wait nm.
Twenty-five COUNTRIES,
Five YEARS.
Not twenty-five years.
That opening shot might be of Gawdawpalin Temple in Bagan, Myanmar. I know for sure that the squat behemoth to the right, in the background, is Dhammayangyi Temple. Go now before it’s overrun by hippies; the area is free of tourists during the summer because of the desert-heat coupled with the humidity of a water buffalo’s nutsack.
Baraka is the shit. Also, my mom’s best friend in college used to date Ron Fricke.
I hate to be That Guy, but it’s 25 countries, 5 years.
I hate to be That Guy, but my butthole itches.
It looks freaking awesome. But I’m not sure how engaging it’s going to be over 100 minutes. I was enraptured by Koyaanisqatsi for the first twenty minutes, but beyond that I felt kind of bored.
My Koyaanisqatsi sentiments exactly. Baraka, however, enthralls me all the way through to the end.
Interesting. I’ll check that out then.
Movies like this remind me of going to the zoo. You see a beautiful animal. You read a sign telling you how awesome it is. Then the next sign says, “Thanks to humans being complete basterds, we have destroyed this animal’s habitat and it will be extinct in twenty years.”
See this beautiful temple? It was built by slaves who were then executed and fed to other slaves.
See this beautiful child? She will grow up to be raped by her uncle than stoned to death for her impurity.
See this gorgeous jungle? It is your next Ikea shelf.
See this 70mm film? Good luck trying to buy film stock five years from now.
Aw, fuck me. I’m drunk.
Just saw Baraka in a theatre down the road. Awesome stuff. Wish I were high for it but I need to do an essay tonight… :(