Manakamana

Hypnotic and serene.

If only the viewing environment were more suited to casual contemplation, allowing the audience (like the passengers) to dip in and out of the car in 10-minute stretches.

Manakamana works as a tone poem, a Warholian revel in the mundane and an ethnographic study of an isolated corner.

Expectations of reliable recurring patterns are set up and knocked down throughout, which is intellectually scintillating if sometimes tough going viscerally. It took me nearly two-thirds of the running time to finally enter the rhythm; results will vary.