Samsara is beyond pretty visuals though that's the first thing you notice. There is a story and a connection between every image in this movie which is a sequel to the similarly made Baraka in 1992. From Tibetian Buddhist retreats to the sprawling freeways of Los Angeles, from pictures of a tattooed hulking giant cuddling his baby to sex dolls being mass produced Samsara will at once shock and humble you. This documentary is universally admired, and you should definitely give it a shot. If you love photography than this is a must watch.

Samsara, a Sanskrit word, means birth, life and death. I think this is a documentary that focuses on three loops and creates an incredible atmosphere. Music and breathtaking images are accompanied by questioning our lives and almost silent screaming. We continue our routine life. Instead of going through this cycle, we continue. Rather than thinking about what is happening, we keep our routines alive. Instead of pursuing our own dreams, we are doing nothing but realizing the dreams of other people. We do not know how to live peacefully and peacefully. We are losing ourselves to earthly affairs, breaking each other, killing, we condemn. Some people can not make money when there is peace and tranquility in this world. I believe that the people who watch Baraka and Samsara will differentiate their views of life.

In this film I saw the most comprehensive appreciation of life in all of its aspects, through very strongly aestheticized images, which if we took outside of the context of tranquil and perfectly composed music, we might have red them completely differently. It's a film-making and artistic mastery which makes it clear that aesthetic context influences how we perceive certain conceptual elements of human cultures. So for example If I saw some of these images in real life, I might have not appreciated them as much as I did through this movie. This is also how this film might influence ones perception of this three-dimensional reality we live in. Another visual quirk of this one is that when we face the frames that actually resemble still photography, the filmed statues for example would seem as if they were slightly moving, under the influence of music or my anticipation of very subtle and calm camera movements that generally abound in this piece. I often wondered why are the most of films narrative and always appreciated music without lyrics and considered artistic music videos that would follow these songs the most attractive forms of film-making. This movie gave me exactly this in such a pleasurable way that I hoped it will never end. It's an overview of entire human culture, of mans both primary (natural world as his source) and secondary nature (culture), grasping with equal intensity all of the aspects of human existence, from birth, all different kinds of developments and death. It's the story mostly about the way we as a human kind have structured the symbolic order, but also of the in-bursts of the real, like natural disasters or human inability to control our constantly reproducing desires, that add up to the overall aesthetics of our existence on this planet that might seem harmonious and horrific on two ends.

In 1993, filmmakers Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson presented a deeply moving portrait of features universal to all human societies, warned of ecological collapse, and depicted how technology was changing our lives in BARAKA. Shot on 70mm film, this was one of the most visually impressive films ever made, and its lack of any dialogue or narration allowed viewers to engage in their own individual reflections about the panorama on the screen. Two decades later, the team returned with SAMSARA, a sequel that wasn't really necessary.One reason that SAMSARA is not very good is that it often seems a shot-for-shot repeat of BARAKA. The filmmakers revisit many of the same locations (such as Thai prostitutes, a chicken-processing plant, home appliance factories, landfill gleaners). Again Buddhism, the Ka'aba and high church Christianity are depicted, but because the film does not go on to any other religions than what was on BARAKA, these rituals feel this time like cheap exoticism instead of unquenchable anthropological curiosity. SAMSARA also lacks the dramatic arc of BARAKA, coming across as a random succession of images instead of the journey from sacredness to horror and back that we found in its predecessor.That is not to say that SAMSARA is completely without interest. There is an astonishing clip of performance artist Olivier de Sagaza, and the freakish Dubai landscape is depicting in a detail that few (even those who have been there) have seen. SAMSARA is all in all a darker film, and while depictions of the wreckage of Katrina, a Wyoming family that are proud to own an arsenal of guns, and a wounded veteran may fail to really shock viewers in the West who have already been exposed to such images for years, scenes of garish funerals in Nigeria and Indonesian men making the rounds in a sulphur mine (even though they know it is killing them) are stirring and memorable. Of course the visuals are rich, and in Bluray format on my HD projector the film is just as stunningly detailed as its predecessor.However, SAMSARA lacks enough new things to say, it surprisingly doesn't offer continual rewards on rewatching, and just by the fact that it exists out there it potentially dilutes the impact of BARAKA, once a singular film. I was entertained enough to give this a 3-star rating, but I would still recommend BARAKA, and even for those who have seen and loved BARAKA, I would not recommend moving on to this film.