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Koyaanisqatsi
1983
KOYAANISQATSI attempts to reveal the beauty of the beast! We usually perceive our world, our way of living, as beautiful because there is nothing else to perceive. If one lives in this world, the globalized world of high technology, all one can see is one layer of commodity piled upon another. In our world the "original" is the .. Read more
| Director | Godfrey Reggio |
|---|---|
| Genres | Drama |
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Critics' reviews (2)
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An offbeat, and often off-beam, documentary-cum-meditation about the decline of western civilisation, using the difference between the untamed American wilderness and hysterical, rush-hour Manhattan as its crux. Director Godfrey Reggio shuns narration in favour of powerful, repetitive music by minimalist composer Philip Glass to match his striking visuals. Made in the early eighties when ecological warnings were starting to take hold, it was, for all its vacuity, a surprising success. The title is a Hopi Indian word meaning “life out of balance”.
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A wildly charitable viewer might describe this as an ecological documentary. Less than 90 minutes transport us from the... read more on Time Out
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Most helpful members' reviews (3)
View all -
11 out of 12 people found this review helpful
brilliant art movie
the music is great and the video images sometimes overly long will last long after you see this, philip glass soundtrack some of the best theme music ever written really adds to the atmosphere, allthough just a collection of video scenes this is ground breaking movie and deserves to be seen on giant plasma screens, a movie that can change your out-look on life.
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9 out of 9 people found this review helpful
Historically Predictable
Several things are interesting about this film
The Philip Glass Music; it is almost a perfect match for the images, and for Glass this is about as good as it gets. He can do film music, but little else.
The images; it looks great, thats because its what you expect. Its full of images of a world we are supposedly losing... do you really want to scrape a living hand to mouth in the wilderness? I dont think so. So its romantacised junk.;
So visually very nice.... a bit like a long car advert (which came first?) Sort of wallpaper video. -
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful
Not To Be Missed
The title of the film apparently originates from a Native American Hopi word meaning, in essence, that the human race is experiencing an increasingly collective life that is “crazy, in turmoil, out of balance, and disintegrating to a point where another way of living is called for”.
Made nearly 25 years ago, in 1983, the film is a simple collection of still and moving images, without narration, accompanied by a mesmerisingly appropriate Philip Glass score. The images, beautifully photographed by Director Godfrey Reggio, contrast the natural beauty of the world against the despoilation of that beauty by man, in the latter’s quest for ‘advancement’. The film depicts those contrasts as stills, real-time, time-lapse and speeded-up images, together with angles that have been imitated on numerous occasions since by other film-makers and in the advertising world.
Regardless of your ecological point of view, the film is an experience not-to-be-missed.
Koyaanisqatsi was the first in a trilogy of films by Reggio, followed by Powaqqatsi in 1988 and Naqoyqatsi in 2005 -
Most recent members' reviews (2)
View all -
1 out of 1 person found this review helpful
Beauty and the Beast
I found this film fantastically inspirational. To look at the monsterous forging of the gold that is the human world. What struck me was that the film is reletavely old and to think what has passed since is quite scary.
I recommend this film for any philospoher, poet or religious person. -
9 out of 9 people found this review helpful
Historically Predictable
Several things are interesting about this film
The Philip Glass Music; it is almost a perfect match for the images, and for Glass this is about as good as it gets. He can do film music, but little else.
The images; it looks great, thats because its what you expect. Its full of images of a world we are supposedly losing... do you really want to scrape a living hand to mouth in the wilderness? I dont think so. So its romantacised junk.;
So visually very nice.... a bit like a long car advert (which came first?) Sort of wallpaper video.
-
11 out of 12 people found this review helpful
brilliant art movie
the music is great and the video images sometimes overly long will last long after you see this, philip glass soundtrack some of the best theme music ever written really adds to the atmosphere, allthough just a collection of video scenes this is ground breaking movie and deserves to be seen on giant plasma screens, a movie that can change your out-look on life.
-
9 out of 9 people found this review helpful
Historically Predictable
Several things are interesting about this film
The Philip Glass Music; it is almost a perfect match for the images, and for Glass this is about as good as it gets. He can do film music, but little else.
The images; it looks great, thats because its what you expect. Its full of images of a world we are supposedly losing... do you really want to scrape a living hand to mouth in the wilderness? I dont think so. So its romantacised junk.;
So visually very nice.... a bit like a long car advert (which came first?) Sort of wallpaper video. -
4 out of 4 people found this review helpful
Not To Be Missed
The title of the film apparently originates from a Native American Hopi word meaning, in essence, that the human race is experiencing an increasingly collective life that is “crazy, in turmoil, out of balance, and disintegrating to a point where another way of living is called for”.
Made nearly 25 years ago, in 1983, the film is a simple collection of still and moving images, without narration, accompanied by a mesmerisingly appropriate Philip Glass score. The images, beautifully photographed by Director Godfrey Reggio, contrast the natural beauty of the world against the despoilation of that beauty by man, in the latter’s quest for ‘advancement’. The film depicts those contrasts as stills, real-time, time-lapse and speeded-up images, together with angles that have been imitated on numerous occasions since by other film-makers and in the advertising world.
Regardless of your ecological point of view, the film is an experience not-to-be-missed.
Koyaanisqatsi was the first in a trilogy of films by Reggio, followed by Powaqqatsi in 1988 and Naqoyqatsi in 2005 -
1 out of 1 person found this review helpful
Beauty and the Beast
I found this film fantastically inspirational. To look at the monsterous forging of the gold that is the human world. What struck me was that the film is reletavely old and to think what has passed since is quite scary.
I recommend this film for any philospoher, poet or religious person. -
Only a few words spring to mind
Excellent , breathtaking and fantastic , was not to sure about this one as music and movie only etc etc but it has to be watched to be enjoyed, you will not be disappointed
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1 out of 2 people found this review helpful
Beutiful, powerful and distrubing
The overwhelming emotion I felt when watching Koyaanisqatsi was one of doom. The speeded up human activity and slowed down shots of nature create a sense of the futility of progress especially as many of the scenes show the mess humans have made of the world looking for progress.
The scenes in New York are especially poignant now as many shots focus on the World Trade Centres- almost as a pinicle of what industrialisation have acheived. Mixed with the haunting chanting and organ music of the soundtrack these images seem to almost taunt us with the message "why didn't you listen to this at the time". 20 years later and humans are making a bigger mess of the world than ever. -
impressive
This film made me quite dizzy and I cannot say I was a fan of the repetitive Philip Glass score either, even though it is so famous. But as I was watching it, my 19-months-old daughter came in the room, started watching and got glued to the screen. I was amazed!!! I thought it would make her irritated and upset, but she loved the part she watched and even though everything moved very fast at the moment, she went: 'yellow cars!', 'MANY people'!, 'look, cars and trucks!', 'the moon!', 'houses, BIG houses!', etc. She absolutely adored the ending with the rocket flying off and requested for that part to be replayed to her many times. I was amazed by her reactions, as I found it an especially tiring thing to watch!!! So, perhaps there is something here for toddlers, who love images and who are too young to speak properly??? My daughter never watches TV (she doesn't even like the kids' shows), so I was impressed to find her interested in this. She loved the chanting, too. I understand the point this film is making, but I found it a tiring and trying experience for me, that is why I am so impressed by someone so young's perspective.
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A Transcendental Film, awesome
I saw this first on late night TV then made the effort to see it whenever it was on at Indy cinemas, usualy in some appalling version scratched and crackly, with bad sound. I have seen Philip Glass play it live twice, once in Seville (spain) and the other time in London. But now it's available in good quality DVD and with proper surround sound (5.1) you get a good approximation of it what it should sound like.
The film starts off slowly with slow Philip Glass appeggios, revealing the magnificant scale of nature- nature in all her awesome scale. Then we see human activity and the huge scale of human activity, scarring the planet, and the music gets more frenetic - huge pipelines, vast dams. Then we hit the grand scale of human cities and the music becomes more frantic, until we go down to the small human scale speeded up manically. A friend watching it said, God this shows how mad we are, what madness we have created.
This is a magnificant film that shows us as what we are, mindboggingly clever apes who have launched a technological society that we have lost control of. -
Dated but interesting
Koyaanisqatsi is an extended montage of time-lapse camerawork accompanied throughout by the music of minimalist composer Philip Glass. There are essentially two main sequences: (1) sunrise over the canyons of the American mid-west and (2) portaits of modern urban American life (people working, eating, travelling etc).
I think the plan is that the viewer supposed to get a sense of a sense of loss by the jarring combination of (1) and (2) - 'if only we could get back to living in canyons!'. The problem is that canyons aren't in the least bit comforting to look at: perhaps some rolling fields or a cosy village pub in Shropshire would have worked better. And it could be argued that Glass's music, with its lack of melody and endless repetition of major arpeggios, is precisely the kind of soulless, vacuous artifact that epitomises our 'lost' society; part of the problem, not the solution.
Since Koyaanisqatsi we have been bombarded by so many images of speeded-up traffic and fast-moving clouds accompanied by whizzy music (Penguin Cafe Orchestra etc) the whole thing feels rather cliched now. Still, it lingers in the mind and the one or two moments of genuine invention (e.g. juxtaposing a sausage production line with commuters on the NYC subway) make it just about worth the effort. -
Beautiful but cynical
A good film if not a little cynical. The representation of nature as beautiful and technology as bad is done brilliantly but it doesn't seem to make a point beyond this - although this may be due to the time it was made. Also, it fails to depict the positive side of technology and that it can sometimes be an extension of nature. Overall a good portrayl of the way in which we live off nature instead of with it.
Critics' reviews (2)
-
An offbeat, and often off-beam, documentary-cum-meditation about the decline of western civilisation, using the difference between the untamed American wilderness and hysterical, rush-hour Manhattan as its crux. Director Godfrey Reggio shuns narration in favour of powerful, repetitive music by minimalist composer Philip Glass to match his striking visuals. Made in the early eighties when ecological warnings were starting to take hold, it was, for all its vacuity, a surprising success. The title is a Hopi Indian word meaning “life out of balance”.
-
A wildly charitable viewer might describe this as an ecological documentary. Less than 90 minutes transport us from the... read more on Time Out
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KOYAANISQATSI attempts to reveal the beauty of the beast! We usually perceive our world, our way of living, as beautiful because there is nothing else to perceive. If one lives in this world, the ... -
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