It is a varied documentary film that appears to present many different issues in the world. The film was shot in 24 countries on six continents in fourteen months, showing religion, politics, natural life and technology.
The form is ravishing, though the content suffers by comparison.
ViewLondon
December 13, 2012
Breathtaking and serenely beautiful to watch, Baraka is still the visual delight it was twenty years ago, thanks to phenomenal photography, superb editing and a strapping score.
While it's easy to look at these often beautiful moving postcards, Fricke presents locations without identifying them, so most viewers will quickly find themselves lost and overwhelmed.
Any one sequence might work powerfully in its own right, but string them together with a musical overlay and the banality of the connections becomes apparent.
It is claimed that the great age of travel is dead - that there are no longer amazing, exotic, beautiful and fearsome places for the traveler to discover. A movie like Baraka gives hope.
The film's one-world thesis is asserted but never made convincing, as Fricke zigzags from the Western Wall to whirling dervishes to the Grand Mosque of Mecca in a superficial gloss on faith (and everything else).
