rating:
(out of
4 stars)United States; 1992
Directed by Ron Fricke; produced by Mark Magidson; writing treatment by Constantine Nicholas, Genevieve Nicholas
'Baraka' is a documentary that contains out of images and music. Beautiful images and great music I might add. The director is Ron Fricke, who was the cinematographer of 'Koyaanisqatsi'. Both films have the same approach although I think this movie has a more positive view. Basically we get beautiful images taken from a lot of parts of the world including New York, Auschwitz, Israel, France and India, just to name a few. All this is perfectly edited, and together with the music written by Michael Stearns it feels like quite an experience.
Watching 'Baraka' I felt a great admiration for the human race, despite all the bad things we have done and still do, and also for our planet which harbors such great places and sights. Some will find the film boring because it does not really tells us something the way narrated documentaries do, but if you watch closely you understand why a picture says more than a thousand words. I was amazed from start to finish, even more than with 'Koyaanisqatsi' or Fricke's 'Chronos', impresses pieces of cinema on their own terms. The only thing that will never come close to 'Koyaanisqatsi' is the perfect score Philip Glass wrote for it, but on other levels I prefer 'Baraka'.