No matter how much cinema means to a person, there are few films which I believe anybody can say actually changed their life. 2011’s Samsara would be unlikely to make even a list of my top 100 favorite films, and yet it is the one that had the greatest direct impact on me. Thanks to this picture, my wife and I became vegetarians.
At one point, live chickens get randomly sucked up into a machine. Needless to say, they do not emerge from the other end alive. There was something so cold about this, a literal death machine, that I realized I wanted as little to do as possible with the meat industry going forwards. Unlike hunting, this is completely impersonal. Something about this mechanized killing just seems so…inhuman.
That scene isn’t representative of most of the picture, a narrative-free affair similar to Koyaanisqatsi. I am always a bit surprised that film didn’t inspire more feature films like it, but then I’m guessing such films don’t equate to big box office. Fortunately, that didn’t stop Ron Fricke from taking a 70 millimeter camera to 25 countries over the course of five years, acquiring truly jaw-dropping footage.
One can appreciate the beauty of the footage at a superficial level. The movie does not force the viewer to come to any conclusions, but it is only natural for one to make connections between the images, as the filmmaker obviously chose these images, and sequenced them in this particular order, for a reason. I largely let the footage just wash over me, but still inevitably came to some conclusions as to what were those intentions.
I found myself mostly pondering the temporary nature of human existence. We may try to permanently leave our mark on the world, but the vast majority will leave no lasting trace. Very few will leave as long of a legacy as Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus, which we see here. We also see the pyramids, but I bet he couldn’t have foreseen the shabby apartment buildings now beside them, satellite dishes atop every one.
Largely, even our belongings will be lost to time, such as a house that was doubtlessly once a home, but which is now being overtaken by desert sand. Other structures we see were devastated by water. In one of those, we see several abandoned trophies, things which were doubtlessly of great personal importance to a person at one time. Now separated from their owner, they have no meaning whatsoever.
Perhaps our legacy is our trash, and we are leaving behind a great deal of that. One wonders what future archeologists may think when they find our landfills. At the rate we’re going, any such scientists may have to be extraterrestrial.
So, there’s footage of huge mountains of trash. Similar to that, we get some imagery of some of the weird artificiality of the modern world. A giant, indoor ski slope. Androids that live deep in the uncanny valley. Towering skyscrapers in the desert. Man-made islands.
Some of the more obvious associations are a bit too on the pierced nose. Think that African woman with the giant round things in her huge earlobes is funny? Just wait until the camera is turned back on America, and on to people who are equally proud of their extensively inked and pierced bodies.
There is one weird misstep in the film, and that is an odd bit of performance art where a man in a business suit sits behind a desk and starts smearing mud on his face. Soon, he is adding paint and all manner of debris to the mess, making himself over as a truly modern primitive. This scene does not fit in the rest of the film.
Despite this misstep, Samsara is a film I highly recommend. Even if you have seen similar films, such as the works of Godrey Reggio, this is still a unique experience, and one is often overwhelming. I will concede it is a tad too overwhelming, as I eventually found myself tuning out. By the time we get to footage of a man buried in a coffin shaped like a giant gun, I had become numbed to the imagery.
Dir: Ron Fricke
Watched on Kanopy