A.
- The central Idea of Waltz With Bashir that I get from the trailer alone is an ex Israeli soldier who has forgotten his memories about a war in Lebanon and Is trying to rekindle those memories through artifacts such as photographs. The central Idea of Baraka, is a look into the essence of life on earth both human and animal.
- Waltz with Bashir is completely animated in an almost comic book style, as I believe the film was adapted from a graphic novel. This gives it a unique style compared to other documentaries, as well as give it the ability to portray past events that would be impossible to realistically film. I noticed that the color palate uses a contrast of a lot of yellows and oranges and blue and greens, this to me is to show the difference between past and present. The music switches mid way through the trailer first with a sort of grunge like music, and then switches to a more thoughtful piano solo track showing the switch in emotion from the excitement of finding old memories, to actually having to live with them once he remembers. Baraka uses all in person footage from around the world of different cultures and wildlife. The music utilizes a lot of different sounds. Mostly these sounds are very primal, a lot of worldly percussion instruments and chanting. Though strangely enough, bagpipes can be heard later in the trailer which is an interesting contrast to the rest of the audio.
- Three Moments in Waltz With Bashir that really stood out to me was when his friend got shot beside him, the mortar fire, and the destruction at the end. It really put into perspective how the mind could erase these awful memories from a person for its own protection. The three scenes from the Baraka trailer are not as cohesive, as there is no one narrative in this documentary. However, the most resinating scenes were the film outside the Jewsh concentration camp, the shoes piled up from the jewish prisoners who perished, and the jewish child praying. To me this is very powerful because it shows the resiliency of human ideals. Even though such a horrific complete genocide was attempted against these people, and many more horrific events throughout history, their beliefs and traditions still hold steadfast.
B.
- I chose Baraka as my documentary. The first section of the film focuses on religion and religious rituals. It starts with the more well known religions such as Judaism, Buddhism, but moves on to more lesser known religions of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The second section primarily focuses on overcrowding of urban areas and wealth inequality. It shows many large cities and the people packed into them with people scarring around like insects from place to place. It also shows poorer people manufacturing goods that are later seen being used by business people, as well as families digging through trash, the homeless and different levels of sex workers. The film then shifts to war and oil. It shows soldiers, abandoned army vehicles on the side of an oil field, people working oil rigs, and then switches to the holocaust and shows the horrors of that time period. Finally, the last section is loosely based on death, that of humans and societies long past. It gave different religious and regional burial rituals and also showed ruins of ancient civilizations.
- When transitions occurred between sections, there would often be shots of landscapes and wildlife to break up the examples of different people. There would often be a change in score to better fit the mood of what was being presented.
- Its hard to really say if there is a definitive narrative in Baraka, as there is no narrator or labeling to lead the viewer through the narrative. However, it is unique in that this allows the view to create their own narrative of the images shown. So in a traditional sense, it is non narrative.
- The images are a little all over the place, as it jumps from culture to culture but is separated into sections of similar content as I stated earlier.
C.
- The first thing I noticed is that the speed at which the film is moving is either slowed down or sped up through out the film except for a few scenes. The film also makes use of dolly type shots as it follows people on vehicles and just overall movement. There is also the use of wide, medium, pans, and some close up shots during different segments of the film. It tended to shift focus on the environment people inhabit and the people themselves with the framing, tending to keep people in the crosses of the screen. While the focus was on people, the film didn’t blur out any of the background, so while a person was the focus, their surroundings were just as important. It was mostly shot during the day and seemed to use natural lighting, however there were a few night time scenes.
- The pacing of the shots was pretty standard, tending to stay between 5-10 seconds, however it strayed from this rule on a couple occasions. There were no interviews in this documentary.
- There definitely isn’t a straight forward path that the film moves through. While watching, I thought of the film as a brief overview of humankind in a few important subjects, as If an alien landed on earth and knew nothing about human kind, It would be a decent introduction to life on Earth from many different perspectives.
D.
- I believe this film is merely a documentation of how people live, and through this, to show that though we may do things differently and it may seem strange, the reasoning behind our actions is generally the same. An interesting connection that is made in Baraka is the similarity to the animal kingdom as well. A few times it shows footage of animal behavior and then shows humans in very similar situations. The most jarring example of this is the chicks on the conveyer belt compared to humans on commuter rails and escalators.
- A word I would use to describe the director of Baraka is Anthropologist, because at the center of this documentary is the drive to understand humankind. Not just an observation, but an understanding.
- I believe the decision to leave out commentary really helped to keep both the film makers and audience able to view without bias. Its as simple as watching people from around the world live their life, so I believe Baraka uses a proper approach to making this film.
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