Made in 1983, Koyaanisqatsi was shot mostly in the desert southwest USA and New York City on a tiny budget with no script. But it then attracted the support of Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas and reached a much wider audience. Its techniques, merging cinematographer Ron Fricke's time-lapse shots (alternately peripatetic and hyperspeed) with Glass' reiterative music (from the meditative to the orgiastic)--as well as its ecology minded imagery--crept into the consciousness of popular culture. The influence of Koyaanisqatsi has by now become unmistakable in television advertisements, music videos and, of course, similar movies.

Dating from 1988, Powaqqatsi finds the director somewhat more directly polemical than before, with Glass's score stretching to embrace world music. Reggio reuses techniques familiar from the previous film (slow motion, time-lapse, superposition) to dramatise the effects of the so-called First World on the Third: displacement, pollution, alienation. But he spends as much time beautifully depicting what various cultures have lost--cooperative living, a sense of joy in labour and religious values--as he does confronting viewers with trains, airliners, coal cars and loneliness. What had been a more or less peaceful, slow-moving, spiritually fulfilling rural existence for these "silent" people (all we hear is music and sound effects) becomes a crowded, suffocating, accelerating industrial urban hell, from Peru to Pakistan. Reggio frames Powaqqatsi with a telling image: the Serra Pelada gold mines, where thousands of men, their clothes and skin imbued with the earth they're moving, carry wet bags up steep slopes in a Sisyphean effort to provide wealth for their employers. While Glass juxtaposes his strangely joyful music, which includes the voices of South American children, a number of these men carry one of their exhausted comrades out of the pit, his head back and arms outstretched--one more sacrifice to Caesar. Nevertheless, Reggio, a former member of the Christian Brothers, seems to maintain hope for renewal. --Robert Burns Neveldine

Interesting how many times the music has been used in adverts, and the imagery has been copied endlessly as well. Also worth pointing out the incredible time, effort and dedication it must have took to film all the time-lapse sequences, especially the cloud sections.

One of the most exhilarating and moving films I've seen. The grid is by far the best section and builds up to a breathtaking climax. The end sequence is superb too, from the triumphal launch, through the explosion and ending with the rocket booster plunging endless to earth licked by flames, as if showing the folly of mans ambitions.

You will not regret buying this.


Yesterday...   February 22, 2006
 15 out of 15 found this review helpful

I watched this film yesterday. I felt like the bottom dropped out of my world, and when it finished my heart was twice the size it had been before. Sharpy and I just sat while the credits rolled, it didn't feel appropriate to move. After everyone had left we walked home in silence.

It was gut wrenchingly beautiful and saddening. For the first 20 minutes I thought it was going to be purely aesthetic...trying to decide whether what you can see is clouds or the sea is a little strange...but when, after 20 minutes of watching footage of some of the bleakest uninhabited landscapes on the planet, you get a closeup of the oil mining industry, it feels like a punch in the stomach.Speeded up shots of spaghetti junctions make the traffic look like red blood cells in the biology videos we used to watch in class. A closeup of an old womans hand with an IV drip and bloodstained tape holding it in place...she reaches out her hand to the nurse changing her IV and the nurse takes her hand for a second. Then you can see, but it's almost imperceptible, the nurses grip loosen as she's about to let go, and every part of you is begging her not to, but you never see. The shot changes before she lets go of the old womans hand. And you know she did, because you could see she was going to, but the tension that was in your body doesn't leave with that knowledge. Sunbathers on a beach overlooked by a factory. Tourists in the factory taking pictures.

It's impossible to describe how a film with no dialogue and essentially no plot, made of a series of pieces of footage put together with a soundtrack comprising mostly an organ and some bass singers can affect someone this much. So watch it.


Life out of balance ?   February 14, 2006
 7 out of 12 found this review helpful

"Koyaanisqatsi" reminds me of the Euthanasia Scene in "Soylent Green" ,where the old man reclines to watch a short nature film set to music , while waiting for the effects of a suicide pill to take effect. He is moved to tears by the beautiful images and uplifting music he witnesses during the last moments of his life. "Koyaanisqatsi" certainly doesn't have that kind of emotional impact on the viewer, but it does have it's fair share of striking images taken both from nature and modern urban life. It uses speeded up ,time-lapse cinematography throughout ; many scenes are full of accelerated cloud and motor vehicle movement which are constructed quite exquisitely. The Martian landscapes of the South West USA are beautifully captured in "Koyaanisqatsi" and a wonderful aesthetic is given to the skyscrapers ,motorways and factories of the city. The film's message is quite vague; by portraying urban life and industrialisation in such a poetic way , it does not necessarily seem to be condemning it , just holding it up in contrast to the unspoiled natural world. The musical accompaniment to "Koyaanisqatsi" is vital for holding the viewer's attention and it succeeds in doing so , speeding up and slowing down to suit the pace of the visuals. I am sure that 20 years ago , "Koyaanisqatsi " was ground breaking in it's use of time lapse cinematography, but it's effect has been dulled over time by familiarity , as many other films and advertisements have incorporated the technique over that period. "Koyaanisqatsi"'s impact is also reduced by being about half an hour too long; eventually the images start to get repetitive and attention starts to wander. However it is still worthwhile watching this film because ,like in the "Soylent Green" scene , it conveys the beauty of both the natural and man-made world quite wonderfully.


Koyaanisqatsi - Life out of balance   July 11, 2005
 9 out of 9 found this review helpful

This is one of the most beautifully crafted films I've seen in a long time.

Every image is rich and vivid in terms of aural and visual aesthetics, as well as conveying a strong underlying message or idea regarding life (qatsi).

The film poses questions regarding the essence of our nature that in a progressing society, has become so infused with the advancement of technology. Has life become that of a series of machinizations, souless, and confined to structure? Godfrey Reggio reminds us that there are parts of the world, aspects of life, which are still untainted by technological development. That society still has the ability to be spiritual and organic. Some images juxtaposing the creations of man and god are so profound and excellently filmed that they become moving in their poignancy.

Phillip Glass' musical score gives Kayaanisqatsi an almost hypnotic quality, ranging in density to fit the sequences of image and moods.

This film is not boring or arbitrary, however the meaning is always going to be purely subjective in regards to the audience. I recommend Koyaanisqatsi because a sign of great filmmaking is being able to create a work that will leave no one indifferent to.