Familiar world so alien in photo montage film

TO quote the somewhat forgotten '80s haircut Gowan, man is a strange animal.

Where other creatures on the planet fight to survive, we fight for fun. Where other animals sleep when they are tired, we insist on staying awake. And where other animals simply live in the moment, we get lost in the quest for ontological purpose.

Just how curiously warped we are remains a fact we cannot perceive because it's the consensus reality we all accept, and it looks normal -- until it's blown up several times its size and reflected back at us in a large-format film.

Samsara's biggest success is emotional and perceptive, because even though this latest non-fiction effort from the boys behind Baraka is really just a photographic montage of everyday human experience, it succeeds in reframing the world we live in.

And to be completely honest, a lot of it is just plain creepy.

The first shot suggests exactly what line the filmmakers are going to ride for the duration: Balinese dancers complete a complex series of mechanical moves before a temple.

They are wearing makeup that completely flattens their features, but exaggerates their eyes.

The young female dancers barely blink, and after a good 30 seconds, they seem robotic. Yet, behind their eyes we can feel a fleeting sense of soulfulness. We can trace the desire for the divine.

They look mechanical, but they are still flesh.

A few shots later, we're behind the scenes at a Japanese sex-toy factory where a few dozen female bodies cast in silicon lie on red slabs. Enormous plastic boobs protrude from the tiny torsos and giant holes gape between the legs.

Then they show us the mechanical heads with dozens of servos beneath the silicon skin, allowing them to emulate the signs of emotion: a raised eyebrow, a downward turn of the lips, a smile.

It's in the gap between the real and the faux, between the fantasy and the fact and between the flesh and the spirit that Samsara weaves a curious mix of jaw-dropping awe and borderline repulsion.

On the one hand, we get stunning images of planet Earth and its natural wonders. On the other, we get the world of humans, and all the horror -- as well as the strange beauty -- it entails.

So whether we're spending time at a pork processing factory, where we're forced to watch a sow pinned to the floor as piglets suckle her teats, or we're staring into the unblinking, unreal eyes of a Tibetan Buddha, the directors are engaging in a game of artistic push-pull.

At times, it's our own minds that run away with the story. For instance, when we're shown a gigantic turntable where cows are loaded on one-by-one, I thought it was going to end in hamburger.

Fortunately, it's just a milking platform. We're not forced to witness the bullet to the brain, but the very fact the abattoir thought entered my head was bullet enough to my old way of thinking.

There is no formal narrative, per se, just a succession of images edited to varieties of music.

Every viewer will find something different in every juxtaposition and scenario, but there's no doubt Samsara will elicit emotion because it's playing to the part of our brain that doesn't use language.

It knows the eyes are the windows to the soul from start to finish, and it meets our gaze at every turn -- urging us to look closer at a world so familiar, and yet so alien.

-- Postmedia News

MOVIE REVIEW

Samsara

Directed by Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson

Grant Park

PG

103 minutes

3 1/2 stars out of five

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 19, 2012 D6