Directed by Ron Fricke. Rated mature.

Opens Friday, February 4, at the Capitol 6

Does anyone really want to see Koyaanisqatsi again? For some strange reason, Ron Fricke thinks we do, and he expresses this conviction in Baraka (a nonlinear documentary that he cowrote, coedited, and photographed, as well as directed). So sure is Fricke, he's willing to chance it even without a haunting, minimalist score from Philip Glass (maybe he assumes that the film's 70mm Todd-Ao format will so seduce our eyes that we'll willingly shut our ears to Michael Stearns's wretched mishmash of traditional music and trite, new-agey tunes).

Visually, Baraka looks like a National Geographic special aimed at readers of Common Ground. Fricke's camera crew travelled to 23 different countries (most with "picturesque" religious traditions) to arrive at a result that looks suspiciously similar to outtakes from both Koyaanisqatsi and its sequel, Powaqqatsi (Fricke shot and cowrote the first of these features for director Godfrey Reggio). The glories of the natural world (scudding clouds, crashing waterfalls) and "natural" human activity (the scrupulous observance of religious ritual in all its myriad forms) are crudely contrasted with the horrors of war (abandoned bombers; assault rifles at the Wailing Wall), exploitation (15 seconds of street kids here, a hint of prostitution there), and the rat race (miles and miles of time-lapse photography). Even the handful of humans who don't act "holy" appear to be suffering from nothing worse than stress (in this movie, it's not just the monks who appear otherworldly; even the monkeys and iguanas favour a severely pious mien). Aggression, tenderness, love, lust, and most other recognizable emotions are notably absent from Fricke's canvas.

Even when the film does manage to be meaningful for a minute or two (the crosscutting between a speeded-up subway station and a chicken battery is genuinely disturbing, as is the superimposition of the Cambodian Holocaust museum over images of Auschwitz), we know it won't last for long. Fricke is just marking time between temples and cataracts.

Baraka is both bubbleheaded and woolly-headed. Its title (which refers to an "inward-dwelling blessing" reputedly vested in eastern religious leaders) is never explained, and its random elements are deliberately stripped of historical context. Things are either "timeless" (the pyramids of Egypt, the monks of the Himalayas) or "topical" (the aftermath of the Gulf War). The film's sense of reverence is so sycophantic, it sometimes triggers unintentional chuckles, as when a slow zoom seems to pass directly through the middle of a Zen abbot's head.

Ironically, all this saccharine kowtowing ultimately does the director's spiritual heroes a major disservice. Anything that is uniquely strong about their various disciplines is boiled away in the director's bland ecumenicism. Far from returning us to our "true selves", Baraka reduces the real world to a rose-tinted, polyglot clich?.