Bara­ka (1992)

Ron Fricke’s 1992 doc­u­men­tary Bara­ka offers wel­come cin­e­mat­ic relief in an age of spe­cial effects, super­stars and pre­dictable, for­mu­la­ic mul­ti­plex fod­der. It defies tired con­ven­tions in a refresh­ing exper­i­ment which takes us on an epic visu­al voy­age to see the won­ders of the world. Bara­ka presents a real, non-fic­tion­al won­der­land just as enchant­i­ng as Hog­warts, as grand as the king­dom as Gon­dor, but with­out the need for vast swathes of CGI trickery.

Pre­sent­ing itself as ​‘A world beyond words’, the film steers away from tra­di­tion­al nar­ra­tive tech­niques and instead offers a thought-pro­vok­ing, dia­logue & plot free spec­ta­cle which speaks a lan­guage that is entire­ly visu­al. Indi­vid­ual frames weave a rich tapes­try, cap­ti­vat­ing the imag­i­na­tion. Michael Stearn’s stir­ring score ranges from a brood­ing groan to an oper­at­ic cry and serves to inten­si­fy Fricke’s atmos­pher­ic visuals.

Divid­ed into three loose­ly con­nect­ed chap­ters, Bara­ka presents an appraisal of the plan­et in terms of its nat­ur­al his­to­ry and human geog­ra­phy. It also explores Fricke’s pet theme of humanity’s rela­tion­ship to the eter­nal. The first and final chap­ters present a kalei­do­scop­ic mon­tage of both nat­ur­al and human spec­ta­cles, includ­ing an obser­va­tion of world faith, reli­gion and cus­tom. What dis­tin­guish­es the two chap­ters is the theme of evo­lu­tion – show­ing man’s inter­ven­tion with the planet.

Per­haps the most inter­est­ing sec­tion comes mid-way through where the ini­tial­ly utopi­an land­scape is inter­rupt­ed by the destruc­tive felling of a tree, which pre­cedes an aero­plane soar­ing through the sky, its engine’s roar pierc­ing the film’s qui­et­ly hyp­not­ic soundtrack.

This imagery sig­nals a change in tone for the film’s sec­ond chap­ter, a the­mat­ic visu­al cri­tique of moder­ni­ty, the indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion and the sub­se­quent dehu­man­i­sa­tion of the pop­u­la­tion. Work­ers on a pro­duc­tion line and com­muters in tran­sit depict a soci­ety engaged in the mun­dane and dis­en­gaged from each oth­er – fig­ures in motion mov­ing blur­ri­ly and busi­ly with­out connection.

Visu­al­ly, Fricke casts a some­what voyeuris­tic gaze upon the globe, his cam­era act­ing as a fas­ci­nat­ed eye slow­ly sur­vey­ing the scene in amaze­ment. The film exper­i­ments with motion, using time-lapse pho­tog­ra­phy to inter­ro­gate sub­jects from a new per­spec­tive. Fre­quent­ly pho­tographed land­marks such as Ayers Rock are the Himalayas are trans­formed into mys­ti­cal crea­ture-like forms.

The organ­ised chaos of a New York traf­fic jam is re-ener­gised into a sur­re­al and play­ful dis­play of pat­tern and light. Moments of con­tem­pla­tive still­ness inter­ject these fren­zied flash­es, cap­tur­ing an almost stat­uesque immo­bil­i­ty in the fre­quent inti­mate por­traits of the human race, from inner city com­muters to med­i­ta­tive tribespeople.

Whilst aes­thet­i­cal­ly absorb­ing, one could be for­giv­en for, at times, feel­ing a bemused spec­u­la­tion as to how all this imagery fits togeth­er. The film pro­vides some­thing of an alter­nate view­ing expe­ri­ence and one which requires effort, per­se­ver­ance and imag­i­na­tion. But the reward is tru­ly mesmeric.