Review of Samsara (2011) by Samer M — 22 Feb 2013

Beyond its visual glory, or its inspiring adaptation of the moving portrait, this movie illustrates the slavery intrinsic to the human condition. Man can fall prey to the Darwinian struggle, or become enslaved by a society so rapidly evolving that it efficiently directs the imperfect behaviors of humans towards a collective goal, such that life itself begins to function as cells do in the human body: as the expendable building blocks of an unsympathetic and greater whole.

Slavery and life are intertwined through the struggle against death. What then, is freedom? Whence man could simply do nothing? No, that is impossible. Whence man could do something for nothing at all. Endless rows of factory workers performing the same rote task ad nausea represent a failure to achieve this. However, the contrasting images of enormous crowds of Muslims praying endlessly before the Kaaba, also insignificant cells in a larger construct, or of the group of monks who work tirelessly on something only to later destroy it, present a solution: freedom is merely the freedom to choose your own form of slavery, rather than be subject to one forced upon you by an external force or by your own negligence.

I believe Mr. Fricke was trying to communicate this, but that by ending the film with more of my favorite shot from the film, that of a pristine barren desert, wind echoing the silence of it all, he was also trying to take a step back form the overwhelming \beauty and horror of life on this Earth and offer reconciliation: all we are is dust in the wind. One can fall back into the eternal caress of death, where even the suffering of an entire species can seem distant and unimportant.