Baraka Review

Why does the film Baraka not have any obvious or conventional uses of plot? Why no dialogue? Perhaps because the title of the film means "breathe" or "essence" in Persian Sufi. In this respect, the film attempts, and in many ways, succeeds in bringing the essence and purity of life on screen. Instead of suffocating the majestic aspects of life with a plot, the director gives the audience a pure interpretation of life, freed of any forms of restrictions (well except the fact that it is a movie rather than the actual locations of course).

The film is a critique of the modern world and the oppression it brings to the purity of the planet and it's geographical elegance. It criticizes industrialism, modern man's conquests for wealth and progress, and attempts to capture the essence of tribal life and all that it represents with a long sequence that shows a tribal dance that would be otherwise unknown to the everyday man of the modern world.

The cinematographer typically begins a sequence with a majestic view of earth, yet the true majesty of the location is not immediately revealed with the beginning of the shot. In this particular shot, the camera dollies to reveal the vast landscape, beyond the geographical formation initially revealed by the opening shot of the sequence.

By contrasting sequences of urbanization and nature, urban life that is shown as organized and seemingly restrictive, where on the other, nature is unrestricted and free.