Eschewing any overall explanation or even scene-by-scene indications of where sequence is taking place, pic thankfully avoids the informational overkill that sinks, for instance, similar globe-hopping IMAX adventures. Helmers constantly vary tonalities: Some rituals are fully annotated, while others unfold as mystically incomprehensible spectacle.

Thus an American purveyor of mummified body parts touts ad nauseum the authenticity of his dubious wares: Hitler's finger, Poe's hand and Woodrow Wilson's brain. But the viewer remains clueless as to why hundreds of pilgrims are busily affixing little squares of gold leaf to a bulbous boulder topped by a golden pagoda.

A full-scale paper Mercedes complete with a papier mache driver is burned in a funeral pyre to send a loved one comfortable wheels in an afterlife in what, according to pic's Web site, is Malaysia. Meanwhile, in India, a man and his wife light incense and solemnly offer prayers to their new computer.

Pic's best moments, however, marry Friedman's drop-dead aesthetic sense with Manley's ethnological zingers. A Japanese cherry blossom viewing affords exquisite arboreal compositions in an atmosphere of increasingly drunken revelry as company men engage in competitive drink-chugging, the set piece ending whimsically in a parade of black umbrellaed silhouettes past masses of white flowers.