Where better to surrender yourself to a flow of images than in a theatre where you’re at the whim of those images? Blu-rays may have ushered in a new era of really nice looking films at home, but they’re still prisoners to that pause button, when really it should be other way round. Cinema, as well as being able to make film big and beautiful, has the power to hold you captive, rooted in your seat. In a time when we’re distracted by so much noise and clutter, that’s really good. Samsara is like Terence Malick’s The Tree Of Life without that middle story bit featuring Brad Pitt, a sprawling view of the world filled with visual splendour. Although that’s not to cite Tree Of Life as an influence here. If anything, it’s the other way round. Samsara’s creator, Ron Fricke, has been making this kind of film for some 30 years, starting with 1982’s Koyaanisqatsi. There he played cinematographer to director Godfrey Reggio, pioneering time-lapse photography to show incredible feats of human engineering and their impact on the world, sometimes good, sometimes not so. It’s now quite a common tool, cropping up in everything from commercials to nature documentaries, but the Qatsi films (there are two more – Powaqqatsi, and Naqoyqatsi, each not quite as good as their predecessor) still look remarkable for it. Likewise, Fricke’s first feature length film as director, Baraka, 20 years old this year but better looking than most films that have come out since. And Fricke makes splendid use of it by focusing on eyes, his camera capturing people staring right back at us as we stare at them. It’s unnerving and fascinating; on one hand because it’s so rare to really lock eyes with someone for that long a stretch. And on the other because Fricke plays around with notions of artificial and human, robotic and organic. Elsewhere, he frames images so dream-like and other-worldly that you might find yourself asking two questions: Where is this place? And is it real? Fricke may have made the most loyal Philip K Dick adaptation not based on a Philip K Dick novel. If you’ve seen any of the Qatsi films or Baraka, that sense of wonder at the images and storytelling on show here may lose some of its sparkle. Fricke returns to some of the messages covered by those films – consumers as conveyor belt automatons, Asia is really beautiful, we’re all rushing around but not really going anywhere – making Samsara drag a little in its final third. But that’s about as mean as I can be. If you like cinema, Samsara is exactly that, and in its most pure form. It has the power to inspire awe and wonder by the simplest of means – the flow of images one after another – but with the most incredible use of these means. Samsara is out in UK cinemas today. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.