tapio_hietamaki When watching 'Baraka', one might think about such questions as 'What does this mean?' or 'What's the point?' When it comes to a film like this, nobody can tell you what the point is. It's like looking out of the window, seeing the children playing, the birds chirping in the trees, the sun touching the horizon and the clouds gathering high in the sky, and asking, 'What's the point?' I don't know what the point is in life or in the world. They just are. Like 'Baraka' just is. It is what it is: a look at what is happening, a look at the things that exist. It is not taking a stand on anything, not offering explanations or making judgments. The only meanings that we attach to these images are preconceived. Like the poor little chicks getting their beaks burned and tossed around in a metal tube. It's not the film that is saying this is wrong. It is simply showing us.When you turn off 'Baraka' saying it's boring and you don't get it, you are in fact closing your eyes to the world around you and saying it's not worth looking at.However, I'm only giving it a 9 because I think 'Koyaanisqatsi' and 'Samsara' achieved similar goals even better and 'Baraka' seems a bit lighter in comparison.

grantss Visually stunning but not as powerful or coherent as Samsara.A documentary on...everything. No narration, no annotations or sub- titles, just images. We see majestic mountains, wildlife, religious and cultural ceremonies and customs, geological phenomena, landscapes, human habitation and how this impacts on nature, industry, urban living, poverty, military weapons and the effects of war, monuments to atrocities, art and architecture. The images are taken from all over the planet. While they might seem random at first, there are links between the different scenes...Quite amazing, visually: well selected and filmed images. It's like a National Geographic video without narration. Interesting themes too: nature vs mankind, war and its effects, the extent of human cruelty, the extent of human creativity, the superficiality and dullness of our daily lives. However, I found the individual scenes a bit ponderous at times, as if the director lingered on one subject too long to take up time. Also, the themes weren't always that clear, profound or well thought out.The problem might be that I watched Samsara (also directed by Ron Fricke and released a year after Baraka) before Baraka, thus some of the novelty had worn off. Samsara seemed more coherent in its message and had better pacing. Maybe if I had watched them in reverse order, my feelings on the two would be reversed.Overall, well worth watching. A very original documentary.

MurdochMaxwell In your opinion what are the most powerful images of the film? How does Ron Fricke's Baraka like the thread that weaves life together? How does Ron Fricke's Baraka content relate to Daniel Quinn's Ishmael? What did you learn from the film? What is the message of the film? What is the value of the film? What mythological story lines does Baraka examine? How is Baraka a "mosaic" of the story Ishmael hopes to tell? How are the images in Baraka & Ishmael Similar? How are they different? What are we doing? Talk about it. Solve Anything. You f****** tw*t. (Mother Culture Hums) + Are you aware? Your connection to your culture (it humming in your ear) & your unwillingness to leave your home culture + Did you see this? -A women seemingly trying to keep a tradition alive in busy streets that were significantly modernized -A assorted group of livestock in a muddy trash pile with people scavenging for food Hey Brah? Counter Culture is Counter to Culture Psychedelic Experience=A Mind manifesting experience Spiritual without religion Doing less for effect (don't show up to war)

Steve Pulaski The combination of sound and images has warranted a wide variety of films with a lasting impact, but Ron Fricke's Baraka merits a unique one because of how much it shows and how little it actually says. Shot over the course of twenty-four countries on six continents in only a fourteen month period, Fricke captures some of the most immaculate images of the Earth, showing it, its people, and its natural beauty all in one richly photographed film. At only ninety minutes, this is a film with an impact guaranteed to hit you harder and harder after the credits roll.Fricke takes a look at numerous corners of the Earth, particularly the impoverished ones, with several individuals struggling to survive or forging a method of surviving in the tumultuous lands where they reside. Fricke photographs the wildlife, the communities, and the precious landscapes that exist in these areas, in addition to showing landmarks like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Lake Natron in Tanzania, tribal celebrations in Kenya, and even monks gathered in a monastery.It's fair to assume that Fricke is tired of seeing staged events of human life, or even exhausted from hearing shortchanged and ignorant remarks about people from other walks of life. Just by looking at what he decided to capture for the film, and how he wanted to edit it together, shows a person that is incredibly in-tuned with life around the world and appreciative of the Earth's natural beauty. However, Fricke doesn't dare neglect what he feels has made the Earth flawed. In one interesting sequence, Fricke juxtaposes factory-life with ordinary life in the city, at first showing employees in a cigarette factory and a countless number of baby chickens on a conveyor belt, waiting to be processed, and finally showing the society that embraces such things as cigarettes and freshly cut/prepared poultry.I watched Fricke's followup to Baraka, Samsara, a few years back, and was absolutely marveled by many of the same features this film bears: impeccable natural beauty, a consistent tone and flow despite no narration whatsoever, divine cinematography, and one-of-a-kind sights and sounds. One of Samsara's many extractable morals was that the Earth is so complex and richly detailed and layered that it took many years to perfect and create to reflect the life we know in present day. Through numerous shots of calamity and destruction, however, we saw how that film detailed that something so beautiful and complicated could be demolished or lessened in an instant.After watching Baraka, I can see how that idea was kickstarted. Fricke has no qualms about examining the ugly with the beautiful, or even finding a complex middle ground along the way. With this kind of layeredness, the film is prevented from being one you can view from only one way. Baraka is a free-form, impressionistic film with some of the most striking photography ever committed to film. If there's one film that's a testament to human spirit, human creation, and even arguably godlike creation, it's this one.Directed by: Ron Fricke.