In his new film Samsara, filmmaker/visual artist Lois Patiño channels the Tibetan Book of the Dead via Apichatpong Weerasethakul. In his natural, documentary style narrative which is a departure from his previous, silent, non narrative, visually stunning work, he invites us to meditate. There are two parts, er, three parts to the film: first part takes place in Laos, the second part, we are supposed to close our eyes for 15 minutes, then third part in Zanzibar. His gamble pays off. I'd love to experience this film on a big screen with other people and perhaps fall asleep and not feel ashamed to do so. It's that kind of film.
In the first part, a young man is reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead to a dying old woman in a small fishing village in Laos. She knows that her time is almost up and ready to travel to Bardo, the intermediate stage where your soul will move on eventually. Reincarnation is mentioned. The young man is to take bunch of monks from the local monestery to a famous waterfall on his boat. This affords Patiño to do some really gorgeous long transitional shots with images overlapping each other.
The old woman passes and we are prompted to close our eyes and travel with the old woman. For the next 15 minutes, we are supposed to close our eyes and feel the light flashing in our closed eyelids with the sounds of what she is hearing from her life. Then silence.
We are now introduced to a little girl in Zanzibar, to a small fishing community where local women gather seaweeds to make soaps out of it. A new white goat is born and the little girl goes everywhere with the goat on a leash. The old woman tells the little girl that the goat might be an incarnation of a big tree in the forest, or an elephant (which we saw in Laos part), or an old woman. The little girl loses her goat.
Gentle and deeply contemplative, Samsara is a truly unique experience. Go see it in theaters if you can.
