Sam­sara review – a qui­et, rad­i­cal masterwork

For years a fix­ture in the film-fes­ti­val circuit’s more rar­efied cor­ners thanks to visu­al­ly strik­ing, entranc­ing­ly enig­mat­ic shorts such as 2012’s Moun­tain in Shad­ow and 2022’s The Sow­er of Stars, 40-year-old Lois Patiño breaks out to sig­nif­i­cant­ly wider renown with his third fea­ture-length pic­ture Sam­sara – the first to obtain UK release. 

A tri­par­tite docu­fic­tion­al rever­ie that begins in Laos and ends in Zanz­ibar, the film’s USP is a 15-minute bridg­ing mid-sec­tion whose nature will not be divulged in this review as its effec­tive­ness depends heav­i­ly on the ele­ment of sur­prise. Suf­fice to say that, A) it feels like new cin­e­mat­ic ground is being bro­ken before our eyes, and B) the impact is expo­nen­tial­ly increased if expe­ri­enced with peo­ple in the dark of the cin­e­ma. Bot­tom line: even if you must trav­el a long way to catch Sam­sara, all effort and expense will be reward­ed and then some.

Like many of his fel­low film­mak­ers hail­ing from Spain’s north-west­ern province of Gali­cia, his approach has in the past prof­itably strad­dled the worlds of cin­e­ma and gallery/​installation. And while dis­tinc­tive and inter­mit­tent­ly mag­is­te­r­i­al, his pre­vi­ous fea­ture-length out­ings Coast of Death, from 2013, and Red Moon Tide, from 2020, togeth­er sug­gest­ed he was ide­al­ly suit­ed to small­er can­vas­es. Not so, as it hap­pi­ly turns out. 

The film’s ambling ear­ly stretch­es will come as a sur­prise to those famil­iar with Patiño’s inno­v­a­tive, some­times eso­teric and aus­tere oeu­vre. Sam­sara (the San­skrit word refers to cycles of rebirth) ini­tial­ly seems to oper­ate among the lan­guid, tor­pid South­east Asian zones of Thai mas­ter Apichat­pong Weerasethakul. In well-worn slow-cin­e­ma style, with non-pro­fes­sion­als play­ing ver­sions of them­selves, we observe the hushed quo­tid­i­ana in and around a river­side Bud­dhist monastery.

The youth­ful, bald-shaved, saf­fron-robed trainee monks include Be Ann (Toumor Xiong); his non-monk pal Amid (Amid Keo­many) pays dai­ly vis­its to the elder­ly, ail­ing Mon (Simone Mila­vanh) and reads aloud to her ​‘Bar­do Thodol’, the Tibetan Book of the Dead. This ser­vice is a cru­cial ele­ment in eas­ing (or even enabling) Mon’s immi­nent tran­si­tion from one plane of exis­tence to the next. 

Noth­ing pre­pares us, how­ev­er, for what ensues when Mon expires. Patiño belat­ed­ly and deft­ly reveals his true exper­i­men­tal colours via a gen­uine coup de cin­e­ma of delight­ful audac­i­ty, exe­cut­ed with sim­ple but over­whelm­ing bravu­ra. A mag­i­cal quar­ter-hour lat­er, the rumi­na­tive, obser­va­tion­al ​“action” has ele­gant­ly segued to a Tan­zan­ian island where a new­born female goat becomes the bleat­ing­ly way­ward pet of Mus­lim school­girl Juwairiya (Juwairiya Idrisa Uwesu).

This is a seduc­tive­ly bal­anced world — in wel­come con­trast to the hor­rors with we’re cur­rent­ly being bom­bard­ed via all media, these are bygone ways of life appar­ent­ly with­out con­flict or strife, buoyed and pro­pelled by har­mo­ny, sim­ple good­ness, and faith. In Sam­sara, the sen­su­al and the spir­i­tu­al flow togeth­er to intox­i­cat­ing and invig­o­rat­ing effect – as the cred­its roll, it feels like our souls have been col­lec­tive­ly cleansed.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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