It's really rare nowadays, to experience something that'll make you stop and think 'wow...damn'.
During endless searches on the TV on Sunday nights, I've stumbled on a 'documentary' on HBO. I put the documentary in prime because it's not a real documentary.
Samsara is an awarded movie- a collection of extremely high quality filmed sequences of varied worlds, sacred grounds, disaster zones, industrial complexes, and natural wonders. It's non-narrative and followed by composed music.



For the first 10 minutes I was really questioning it and thought I'd be bored- scenes of lava eruptions and airviews of ancient temples-



But then it got interesting and you get to realise what's it's all about after some time. I'll start with the meaning of the word samsara.
In ancient Hinduism and Buddhism, it's the repeating cycle of birth, life and death (reincarnation) as well as one's actions and consequences in the past, present, and future. All we are and will be is an affect of our prior doings. It's more philosophy than religion, and it's kind of the point of the movie.
We are shown long exposures of nights in deserts, ruins of Petra compared to ruins of Katrina, sex blow-up toys in Japan made to look like young girls compared to actual girls and women who are made to look like dolls. Speaking of, there's an amazing, terrific take of a Geisha staring in the camera and a tear goes down her cheek.



It took five years for the filmmakers to finish it. They traveled through five continents, visited most sacred places like Mecca, Tibetan monastery and Jerusalem.
One of the coolest things was the making of Mandala- monks pour colored sand almost speck by speck to make large, unimaginable art





By tradition, once a Mandala is made, it's a tribute to Buddha. It's not for us humans, so monks scrape it of, mix the sand together (as a symbol of gathering the art and something that was once beautiful) and dedicating that sand to Buddha. Trippy, right?



And we get to see the process of enormous producing of noodles (completely made by people), how chicken and cows are grown, gathered, cleaned, killed, packed and shipped to large malls in different countries, later to be eaten by overweight people who's only escape from obesity is surgeon, due to the lack of ability to stop eating.
And you get all of that by just looking at images and scenes, and no commentary or narration.

For me, most amazing scenes were the ones that weren't staged. Nothing was staged, but these massive scenes of army parades, prison dances, karate practice or sulphur mining are breathtaking. You don't get to see those things if you live in a western, modern world.






My brother was really disturbed by the sequence dedicated to weapons. After being shown how guns are made, we see a village in Africa with the most tribal people you could imagine- living in barracks with no water or normal clothing, painted in tribal colors, but every man has a new gun. Makes you think about people priorities and how weapons connect even the most distant people and culture to the trend of killing and the need to be dominant in their surrounding. Plus we see a 'typical' american family with a collection of weapons a small army could use and their daughter with a pink gun. Appropriate, right?



Watch it yourself and decide what you want it to mean to you. It doesn't have a true meaning, it's supposed to make you reflect and the size of this world and how we are specks in life's movement. Seeing all the varieties of different cultures and ways of life makes you feel small in this world. There is so, so much more in this movie. Every take is amazing and award-worthy. Filmmakers produced special cameras to be able to record in such quality, so take that in mind if you'll watch it, and look at the details and colors.
I think it's something really special, a rare thing to leave you speechless.









Will write soon, xx