99 minutes of silence

We would surely agree on the fact that communication does not strictly depend on words -in fact the Scientifics assure that only the 10% of it consists on verbal language. However, I bet you would not be that convinced that it is possible to find a strong message in a 99 minutes documentary film in which no one says a single word. But it actually is.

Samsara is a no narrative documentary directed by Ron Fricke and produced by Mark Magidson. It was first premiered last 2011 at the Toronto International Film Festival. It took Fricke and Magidson five years time to travel over 25 countries around the world and film suggestive landscapes, rituals, people and places of our present time. It actually has a connection with the title of the work: the Sanskrit word ‘samsara’ means ‘world’ or ‘cyclic existence’, but it is often used to describe worldwide activities.

The official website of the film describes it more accurately: “Expanding on the themes they developed in Baraka (1992) and Chronos (1985), Samsara explores the wonders of our world from the mundane to the miraculous, looking into the unfathomable reaches of man’s spirituality and the human experience. Neither a traditional documentary nor a travelogue, Samsara takes the form of a nonverbal, guided meditation”. Indeed, that is literally reading an image.

A thousand workers chain, buddhist monks, a dump, a Hindu dancer, the fake islands in Dubai, an abandoned house, the subway, street dancers. They all seem random motifs, but the more you enter in it the more you start to find an order. It is actually the viewers who end up improvising a script with their own thoughts that fight with the silence so as to create a personal message.

Some will say it’s not easy to watch, and they might have their comprehensible reasons. Certainly, entertaining, playful or funny would not be the words to describe it. The slow rhythm, combined with the ethereal music by Michael Stearns, Lisa Gerrard and Marcello de Francisci, occasionally create a perturbing feeling. But after watching it you will consider that sometimes active uneasiness can be more worthy than passive amusement.

Marina Hernández