Sacred Art, Ritual the 1992

Sacred Art, Ritual

The 1992 film Baraka stretches the boundaries of movie media and challenges viewers to develop a broader understanding of the human experience. Baraka is a plot-free film consisting simply of superb photography and cinematography. Like the ineffability of the spiritual experience itself, Baraka demonstrates that words are insufficient in conveying the sense of the sublime. Rather, Fricke uses visual art to suggest the intimate connections between human consciousness and the manifest universe.

Nature plays a major role in religious ritual, even in world religions that decry paganism. The traditional religions that rely heavily on nature for religious art and religious ritual especially form links between human consciousness and the divine. Baraka depicts the interfaces between humanity and nature; and between human religious expressions and nature too. Footage of Kenyan tribal ritual, for example, illustrates the formal ways human beings have cultivated respect for the world in which they live. Fricke juxtaposes such intimate human-nature connections with dysfunctional, unharmonious ones. Time-lapse footage of urban crowds, scenes of war and genocide, and the confining quarters of factory work are a few of the examples of how human beings have denied their relationship with and responsibility to the world around them: human and non-human.

By depicting deep subject matter using a particular art form, Fricke in fact creates a piece of sacred art with Baraka. The film maximizes the potential of the medium as one of many possible ways to express devotion. Footage of people in prayer; of the ancient temples of Egypt; and of Sufi dancers all offer insight into other ways human beings have creatively expressed religious devotion.

Some scenes in the film illustrate the way agriculture can become artful and sacred. For instance, the terraced rice paddies of Bali look as if they were sculpted purposely to be beautiful. Their practical purpose fuses with their artistic function. Moreover, in cultures like Bali or in Kenya, nature, art, and religion are inseparable. Each supports and informs the other. Religious expression would be impossible without the tools that nature provides, just as eating would be impossible without nature. Using no dialogue, Fricke is able to show how losing touch with nature means losing touch with the essence of being human.

Religions that deny nature can help their practitioners reach elevated states of awareness, evident in the footage of Muslims and Jews in prayer. Yet Baraka illustrates that such elaborate human religions cannot compete with the simple wonders of nature in evoking spiritual experiences. Nature photography in Baraka is some of the most poignant of the entire film. Fricke achieves a brilliant balance between the human and natural worlds. Thus, the film is largely about transcendence. Ironically, the mundane world of nature can be a powerful vehicle for transcendence.

Nature is one of the few universal links between all human beings and all cultures around the world. The body is another; and Fricke does depict the incredible diversity of human form just as the director demonstrates the wild variety of ecosystems on the planet. Each culture interacts with nature in its own way, working with the particular climate, plants, and animals that comprise their ecosystem. Similarly, the people that comprise cultures look different from one another and yet there are common features to them all. A film like Baraka focuses on unity and common ground more than difference, even while using images of startling diversity on the screen.

Early in the film, scenes of sacred sites seem intimately connected with nature. Shrines to nature spirits and dances directed at nature gods show how human beings have attempted to harness the power of nature, manipulate it, and work with it in harmony. Communion with nature can come in the form of visual art and craft; in the form of storytelling; or in the form of dance. Each of these modes of creative expression invokes the unknown, powerful forces that underlie creation. Even though science can measure, explain, and manipulate nature it cannot answer the ultimate questions of why and how nature -- or human beings -- exist in the first place. Religious rituals offer human beings a way to seek answers to life's biggest questions through direct experience.

Different cultures have approached nature differently but traditional cultures share in common a reverence for the natural world that is all but absent in modern, industrialized societies. The religions that have sprouted up in modern nations parallel the worldview that human beings should triumph over nature rather than work with nature. In Baraka, devastating footage of death and destruction show what human beings are capable of when they lose respect for nature.

Because Fricke shows scenes of ancient and modern temples, Baraka also addresses the issue of time and progress. Human beings have worshipped differently throughout time. The human relationship with nature has also changed considerably since the industrial age. Yet traditional cultures continue to cultivate the direct experience with the divine that nature worship and its associated rituals provide. Dance, storytelling, and art that uses nature as its focal point empowers people as much today as it did at the dawn of human civilization.

Nature can also be used as a symbol for meditation. Focusing on concepts like birth, growth, death, or on the behavior of water or fire can stimulate awareness into the ultimate Cause of reality. Contemplative religious traditions like Sufism or Buddhism perfectly illustrate the power of the human mind. Through meditation the mind uses symbols to stimulate self-awareness and general awareness about the world or even the meaning of life.

A total eclipse of the sun forms some of the most dramatic footage in Baraka, and also raises several pertinent questions about the interface between humanity and nature. First, the eclipse reminds viewers of the plethora of superstitions that have underwritten many if not all of the world's religions. Eclipses have been widely viewed as omens. Inferring meaning from a natural occurrence is how superstitions are formed, showing how human beings creatively interpret the natural world.