‎Baraka (1992) directed by Ron Fricke • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

Baraka

1992 Directed by Ron Fricke

A world beyond words.

This is a paralyzingly beautiful documentary with a global vision: an odyssey through landscape and time, that is an attempt to capture the essence of life.

Alternative Titles

Baraka - Eine Welt jenseits der Worte, Világok arca - Baraka, Baraka - Odysea země

documentary

96 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Scott Anderson ★★★★★

Occasionally, I just want to sit down and watch a film, any film, as long as it fits into a specific genre. I might say "I'm in the mood for a comedy" or "I could go for a kick ass Sci Fi right now", and then I walk over to the wall o' film and find exactly what I am looking for to whet my appetite. As the clock struck midnight and a new day began, I realized what I was looking for at the moment. I didn't want to laugh, I didn't want to solve a puzzle, hell, I didn't even want to try to follow a plot.

I just wanted to see something beautiful.

My second viewing of…
Review by Cohaagen's Heir ★★★★½ 9

Like a love child of Terrence Malick and The Discovery Channel, BARAKA is a meditative look at some of the people, places, and cultures from around our unique world.

It also happens to boast some of the most spectacular, awe-inspiring picture quality to ever grace the blu-ray format.
Review by Edgar Cochran ★★★★★ 2

In order to start with my Baraka review, I definitely must make myself clear with the following point: My evaluation standards for a film are completely different from those I have for grading a documentary. Since both belong to totally different categories, documentaries can't be really considered as movies. In fact, a documentary is a genre itself. Whereas films are useful for narrating a particular story, being either original or based in any bibliographical or artistic source (including autobiographical portraits), through acting, directing and a prior screenplay, the magic of documentaries come directly from the fact that they represent a small portion of reality of a small part of the world seen through the eyes of a director. There is…
Review by Steven Sheehan ★★★★ 8

Not necessarily so different from his more recent Samsara but equally as effective, Ron Fricke holds up a mirror to reflect back a meditative view on the world around us. Its non-judgemental approach allows you to pick and choose the elements that mean something to you, morphing everyday practices into a eye-opening moment.

There is a sense of narrative to the construction of the images, rather than complete randomness. The underlying theme appears to be our connection with nature and vice-versa, a spiritual essence that Fricke is attempting to capture. Like some sort of visual poem we are guided through cathedrals and temples, hidden tribes and busy metro systems.

It allows us to take a step back from the day-to-day…
Review by Dirk van Eck ★★★

A classic anthropologist’s wet dream caught on tape, in very high definition. Baraka is just over ninety minutes of stunning photography, capturing Earth’s extremes in terms of nature, but more prominently in terms of cultural diversity. For a movie disembarking from that premise, it is a bit awkward to see North America relatively underrepresented and Europe basically absent (I think I counted one short shot in a French cathedral, but that is about it). Director-writer-editor-cinematographer Ron Fricke is clearly more concerned with trying to achieve a profound exhibition of cultural exceptionalism, in which the extraordinary and the peculiar are (wrongly) displayed so as to speak for a truer, but less spectacular, national image. This National Geographic account of countries is…
Review by Geoffrey McPhail ★★★★

I’d probably like it more if I had seen this before I saw Samsara but there’s some really beautiful stuff here and it looks amazing for being 27 years old!

Recent reviews

Review by Moneeb Montasir ★★★★★

Amazing visual art.
Review by Spencer Joseph ★★★★

Very good, but it didn’t grab me in the same way that Samsara or Koyaanisqatsi did.
Review by Geoffrey McPhail ★★★★

I’d probably like it more if I had seen this before I saw Samsara but there’s some really beautiful stuff here and it looks amazing for being 27 years old!
Review by Keegan Broadway ★★★★

It looks cool I guess.

My mind was distracted by the rather unpleasant visit I had to Waffle House before the film. The source of my misery was our waiter, who goes by the name of “Dragon.” He looked and acted like the serial killer Edmund Kemper. I honestly felt like I was in a prequel spin-off series of Mindhunter that followed Kemper. He immediately created an uncomfortable atmosphere through the slow way he handed out our utensils. It looked like he was methodically setting up dominos. The big WTF moment came when he awkwardly insinuated that my group was high on marijuana. I mean...we were, but you don’t just ducking say that shit. Anyways, Baraka rules and Dragon drools (he probably does drool).
Review by jcodoyannis ★★★★½

Required viewing for lovers of cannabis and blu-rays.
Review by d_cof ★★★

Amazing - even stunning images (epic and intimate) with a stirring soundtrack, but with no context or explanation. I really feel that without the slightest explanation of even the location of these scenes the images will quickly fade away from me - but who knows, perhaps the stunning beauty and sorrow makes a deep subconscious connection that I assume Fricke is aiming for. I feel like the lack of context or commentary is an effort to present images objectively, but Fricke has editorialized by his choices, and his vision is decidedly dark. For example, there is not one laugh or full smile in the dozens of human portraits.
Review by crowej ★★★★★

Everything makes sense now
Review by chelsea c ★★★★★

iso an album that syncs up to this
Review by parkerneff ★★★½

Beautiful photography, epic (sometimes distractingly so) Lord of the Rings style booming score and sound mix.

Can't help but think this is a bit of a one step forward, two steps back for Mr. Fricke. There is a carelessness to the rhythm and arrangement of these amazing shots. They're not strung together to any melody, to make any point, like the best of these docs. Individually they have power but the disorganized onslaught left me a little dulled. Is it fair to criticize a non-narrative doc for not having form?

If the point is to show the grand diversity of the experience of the planet, this movie should have been shot in a way that leans into that. Hard to feel like a time-lapse-into-tilt-into-dolly-into-focus just as a man's looking up from his prayer is a natural capture.