★ 10 / 10
Time is the theme of Fricke's 1985 film
Matthew B
Time is the theme of Fricke's 1985 film, Chronos. Chronos is a dry run for Baraka and Samsara, an early experiment in mixing images of ancient buildings with…
Time is the theme of Fricke's 1985 film, Chronos. Chronos is a dry run for Baraka and Samsara, an early experiment in mixing images of ancient buildings with scenes from modern life, and a mingling of slow motion, time lapse, and speeded-up camerawork.
The editing and structure are not as sophisticated as in the later works, but Chronos is still a serene and peaceful way to spend 40 minutes. Fricke's team filmed across five continents, a reminder of how much work went into such a short movie.
Fricke's movie riffs on different concepts of time. He films different seasons, and different times of day. We can detect the movement of time on still objects by watching the pattern of the sun and moon, or the approaching and receding patterns of the shadows that cover them.
These objects can include edifices such as Stonehenge, filmed over a space of time that is denoted by the movement of the overhead clouds. More particularly Fricke likes statues, which seem like chronicles of time in themselves – large structures in human or animal shape that seem to stand in imperturbable silence, as if waiting aeons for future events.
Statues and other human structures can seem frozen in time, but this is belied by the erosion and damage already inflicted on them. Faces, arms and heads have worn away or fallen off, a reminder to us that these treasures of a past age will not be with us forever.
The human structures that Fricke shares with us come from different time zones too – prehistory, Roman times, ancient Egypt, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and of course our own time. It is like a history of human development, but blended in a chronological soup.
Sometimes Fricke mixes two different time zones in the same scene. He shows a departure lounge where the scene has been sped up so that the visitors seem like insects buzzing around in a glass container. Later he offers still images of this scene. The people are simultaneously reduced to a rapid streak of movement, and yet stationary.
As in later works, Fricke is particularly addicted to accelerating the pace of images in urban or westernised settings. We watch an anthill of cars passing along busy roads. The flow of cars and pedestrians is hypnotic to the eye. Later a car factory, and even an opera flash past our eyes, the seats of the auditorium filling in two or three seconds.
This approach gives Fricke's films an unreal and dream-like quality, something that is enhanced by the accompanying new age muzak that takes its influence from world music. The images that we see are real sights, but they play out at a speed that makes them seem fantastical, mere wisps that vanish.
I wrote a longer appreciation of Ron Fricke's films on my blog page if you would like to read more: https://themoviescreenscene.wordpress.com/2021/08/29/three-films-by-ron-fricke-chronos-baraka-and-samsara/
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★ 5 / 10
Impressive, but a bit generic
R T
Impressive, but a bit generic.
Impressive, but a bit generic.
★ 8 / 10
Definitely more IMAX-y than Fricke's later work, which
R T
Definitely more IMAX-y than Fricke's later work, which often makes it more bland, but also results it a few over-the-top visually intense scenes.
Definitely more IMAX-y than Fricke's later work, which often makes it more bland, but also results it a few over-the-top visually intense scenes.
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· 1K ratings
7.7/10
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12 hr 42 min ? Not really.