The film has no dialogue, it's just a rolling wave of time-lapse photography and sweeping shots of the world. A snapshot of 1992. The music pins the scenes together. An aerial view of cars dancing between New York's grid of traffic lights, tribes chanting and jumping like pogo dancers with deadpan faces, the shift from a crowded tobacco factory to -with the crashing crescendo of a drum- a man lazily inhaling from a cigarette. It's in a similar vein to the quatsi films if you've seen any of them -Baraka's director was the cinematogropher on Koyaanisqatsi.
This is a video of the Kecak monkey chant in Bali, Indonesia. It's incredible!
The brilliantly crazy looking lead chanter is said to be possessed by the monkey spirit. Kecak has its roots in sanghyang, a trance-inducing exorcism dance, and in the 1930s it developed into a drama, depicting a battle from the Ramayana where the monkey-like Vanara helped Prince Rama fight evil King Ravana. I love this battle part of it. It's like a surreal version of the Jets and the Sharks in West Side Story..
Some say the drama element was the influence of Walter Spies, a German painter and musician who intended to present it to Western tourist audiences. Others say the Balinese were already developing the form when he arrived on the island. Whatever, it's fantastic.
