For example, the fast motion sequence of subway riders is interrupted by the image of the freaky looking woman with the mask over her mouth and the crazy multi-colored eyes, and then we are back to looking at the subway. What was that image of that lady, what did that have to do with the rest of that sequence? Was she a subway rider, was she part of that culture? There was nothing to establish her presence.

This is a little different of your critique of asking for an explanation of the images. Done right, the shots can establish context, so even if you don’t know what you’re looking at, you have an idea of WHY it’s being presented to you. I’m mainly talking about randomly inserted images in sequences that are otherwise connected (final example, the Thousand Arms Dance girls appear for a split second about a 1/4 of the way through the film, but otherwise don’t appear until the end, why bother showing us that split second image so soon then?).

The movie shares so many similarities with Baraka, from the long shots of people looking directly into the camera (which I think was overdone here compared to the previous film), the mechanizations of food production (which, like the guns/weapons/war sequence outstayed its welcome), to the images of nature (i swear that’s the same tree in the desert that opens and closes Baraka).

Looking around online it appears that Baraka was edited to go along with the soundtrack, while Samsara was edited first, and then the soundtrack was added to fit the images. I think this created an odd flow.

Lastly, the only part of the film me and my fellow moviegoers didn’t like was the business man/performance art piece. Everything else in the movie was presented as an observation, whereas this sequence felt like they had specifically directed this person to play to the camera. While the sequence was neat (and by that I mean disturbing as hell), it just didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the film.

Overall, I liked Samsara, but Baraka is superior.