Benedictio Orbis

Baraka is a magical journey that takes you around the world and shows you the wonders and ills of the planet we call home. The film relates to world literature because they both share the common goal of making people aware of other people and cultures. Baraka is awesome because it reaches a different audience than world literature because sadly not everyone loves reading but the vast majority of people love watching movies. The film relates to 1st semester because it shows us images of oppression and horror going on in the world around us that you would have to be a Roger to ignore. Also the inspires people to care and not be the apathetic to wonder and sometimes the horror of the world around us. Some of the images that the film uses to stir this compassion and wonderment were the scenes of nature like slow-mos of cloud patterns and cute mediative monkeys in hot springs. Also the scenes showing religious and spiritual ceremonies were strangely touching. Then later in the film they show nature and peoples' ways of life being destroyed and your brain jumps back to the scene of the mediative monkey and the various touching ceremonies. Which in turn makes you feel strangely protective of the nature and ways of life around you and around the world. One of the most impactful images for me was the factory farming of the chicks on the conveyor belt. Just the coldness in which living things are treated in that scene sticks in your mind because to the people run that factory those living chicks are just a product and are just money. The images that I thought were moving differed from Brussat's images because she focused on the people and the contrast between them were as I focused more on the wonder of nature and how humans as a whole are impacting it.

The movement and sound in the film Baraka impact the overall meaning because the music impacts the mood of the images that are shown. Like in the film when the crater that spewing out lava is shown there is really intense music that is suppose to make you feel almost fearful of the earth's power to destroy. Yet if they had paired the lava with Into the Universe with Morgan Freeman-esque music then you would have been more awed by nature's great power than fearful. Also how the city and urban scenes are paired with fast paced music so that you feel the hustle and bustle of the city and the rural or nature scenes are paired with peaceful, zen type music. As for movement it is much the same principal because the nature scenes are sometimes slow-motion or a time-lapse for cloud patterns and the night sky. The city scenes are sometimes also time-lapse yet they give feeling of stress as you see thousands of people moving swiftly from point A to point B as quickly as possible with little notice to their surroundings. The conflicting uses of time-laspe in this film efficiently show the polar opposites of our planet. Also the complete lack of talking in this film makes each image completely objective so that each person can develop their own opinion. Which is rather strange in today's world because it seems that every film, person, newscast and song is forcing it's opinion on you and it trying to sway you one way or another. This film is different though because it is just trying to sway you towards compassion for the world around you. I seriously doubt that they film makers care where you find the moving moment in the film as long is there is one and as long as you are swayed towards empathy. Also in the beginning title there is a almost complete eclipse yet almost at the end the same eclipse is shown ending and revealing the light. Which I believe is the purpose of this film to take people who are in the darkness of apathy and show them the light of empathy.