Shot in glorious Panavision Super 70 (65mm) 'Samsara' is another one of those wordless pretty-picture films that works in various modes that as an overarching theme basically has the impermanence of everything. The tranquil start juxtaposes human achievement (culture, art,...) with a tumultuous nature (volcanoes, erosion,...) provoking the question of how we can exist let alone be creative in a world that doesn't give a sh!t. This section at some point becomes about the interaction between human art and what you may want to call natural art with images of ancient constructions being transformed by nature over time which has a beauty all of its own.
Then things get more lively (including the music, of course) as the film goes into "Mondo Cane" mode with cultural weirdness from all over the world like a corpse getting carried over a cemetery and buried in a coffin in the shape of a gun. Other coffins on display have the shape of fish and airplanes. The film visits various slaughterhouses (pigs, chickens and cows all get the automatized Ax) which leads straight to humanoid robots and to sex dolls whose faces are juxtaposed with those of dancing ladyboys in a Taiwanese club with interconnecting footage of plastic surgeries.
The third mode is that of crowds and how they act in union like tens of thousands of people praying in Mekka, running around that stone, kneeling, standing up, etc. There are the dazzling lights of a metropolis from the bird's-eye view and thousands of prisoners dancing in formation to a sweat-inducing dance beat. In the end 'Samsara' comes back to the images of the beginning with monks who painstakingly created a picture made of sand looking at the picture for a few seconds and then wiping it off the floor again and collecting the now multicolored sand in a bowl. The last image is that of dunes shaped by wind, the fate of everything on this planet.
No matter if 'Samsara' uses a stationary camera, a steady camera or helicopter shots; no matter if it focuses on details, on individuals or on crowds; no matter if it uses high-speed photography, time-lapse photography or plain normal speed; it is always great-looking due to the high resolution and most notably due to the staggering ever-present smoothness of motion that gives a true impression of not just a floating camera but maybe even of a floating world without ever having to leave the Earth's atmosphere.
Then things get more lively (including the music, of course) as the film goes into "Mondo Cane" mode with cultural weirdness from all over the world like a corpse getting carried over a cemetery and buried in a coffin in the shape of a gun. Other coffins on display have the shape of fish and airplanes. The film visits various slaughterhouses (pigs, chickens and cows all get the automatized Ax) which leads straight to humanoid robots and to sex dolls whose faces are juxtaposed with those of dancing ladyboys in a Taiwanese club with interconnecting footage of plastic surgeries.
The third mode is that of crowds and how they act in union like tens of thousands of people praying in Mekka, running around that stone, kneeling, standing up, etc. There are the dazzling lights of a metropolis from the bird's-eye view and thousands of prisoners dancing in formation to a sweat-inducing dance beat. In the end 'Samsara' comes back to the images of the beginning with monks who painstakingly created a picture made of sand looking at the picture for a few seconds and then wiping it off the floor again and collecting the now multicolored sand in a bowl. The last image is that of dunes shaped by wind, the fate of everything on this planet.
No matter if 'Samsara' uses a stationary camera, a steady camera or helicopter shots; no matter if it focuses on details, on individuals or on crowds; no matter if it uses high-speed photography, time-lapse photography or plain normal speed; it is always great-looking due to the high resolution and most notably due to the staggering ever-present smoothness of motion that gives a true impression of not just a floating camera but maybe even of a floating world without ever having to leave the Earth's atmosphere.