Spoilers for Samsara (Lois Patiño, 2023) follow. It’s certainly recommended to watch this unique film first without knowing anything else about it.
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Can you watch a movie with your eyes closed? With Samsara it appears that you might be able to. Around halfway through the film, after the death of an old lady in Laos, she begins her journey through the bardo — not the protagonist of Inarritu’s eponymous 2022 movie, but a liminal state between life and death.
Here Patiño, supremely confident after about an hour of careful enthography, pulls one of my favourite cinematic tricks. Like Alexandre Koberidze in What Do We See When We Look at the Sky (2021) playfully writing, “Dear Audience, please close your eyes at the first signal” or Bi Gan solemnly instructing participants to put their 3D glasses on halfway through Long Day’s Journey into Night (2018), he tells the audience exactly how they should watch his film.
In this instance, a polite title card tells us not to watch his film during its most transcendent sequence; a 15-minute flurry of flashing lights scored to experimental droning music and traditional gongs and bells, as well as sound design varying from busy insects to the sound of an accordion. The lady’s spirit is floating through space, and so is the audience; overwhelmed and transfixed. I’ve never seen (or never not seen) anything quite like this before.
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