Baraka (1992)

dir. Ron Fricke
writ. Constantine Nicholas & Genevieve Nicholas (treatment)

It's a slick trick to pull off a feature length film without actors, dialogue, narration, or a distinct narrative thread. Godfrey Reggio has his followers from his -qatsi films (Koyaanisqatsi being the first, much of it shot by Fricke) though they can smack of stock footage festivals. Bill Morrison's Decasia, a collection of decaying film clips with a score of slightly out of tune instruments meant to match the faltering visual imagery, has a more profound impact, repetition of certain images seeming to yearningly attempt to convey some mystical message impossible to translate into words.

Fricke manages a similar feat, passages of Baraka flowing into a parable of modern life, the distance between the spirit and the western world of work and city living. While the message may seem familiar from the -qatsi films, Fricke avoids preaching better than Reggio, frequently shifting gears and letting the images spread more thinly, permitting ambiguity.

That's not to say he isn't above editorial direction, though even then he gives more than guides. One of the more powerful sections shows a factory, following a conveyor belt of eggs that soon become chicks, rolled and shuffled, finally arriving in tightly packed cages of adult chickens, and cross cuts it with city folk packing in and out of subways, grimly commuting through life. Instead of just the obvious comparison and aroused disgust at the treatment of animals, the scene suggests that we should expect no better, for why wouldn't we mass-produce captive animals as food when we so willingly subject ourselves to the same conditions.