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Showing posts with label baraka. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baraka. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Baraka

I'm including the description that someone on IMDB so graciously bestowed upon this movie because I suspect some of you have not seen this movie. For those who have...you know what I'm in for.  For those who haven't, I urge you to add to your Netflix queue.

Without words, cameras show us the world, with an emphasis not on "where," but on "what's there." It begins with morning, natural landscapes and people at prayer: volcanoes, water falls, veldts, and forests; several hundred monks do a monkey chant. Indigenous peoples apply body paint; whole villages dance. The film moves to destruction of nature via logging, blasting, and strip mining. Images of poverty, rapid urban life, and factories give way to war, concentration camps, and mass graves. Ancient ruins come into view, and then a sacred river where pilgrims bathe and funeral pyres burn. Prayer and nature return. A monk rings a huge bell; stars wheel across the sky.