Film Review: Koyaanisqatsi
Images courtesy of Caitlin Petit & Cinema Nova.
1982 cult hit Koyaanisqatsi is a non-narrative experimental documentary, featuring no narration or dialogue and very little on-screen text. Produced and directed by Godfrey Reggio, the success of the feature rides almost entirely on its otherworldly score, composed by Philip Glass, coupled with Ron Fricke’s powerful cinematography. Koyaanisqatsi is a word used by the Hopi peoples of northeast Arizona which literally translates to “corrupted/chaotic life”, though the film prefers to define it as “life out of balance”, among other similar interpretations. Reggio stated that he chose not to use verbal language in the film not because he didn’t want to, but rather that he felt language no longer describes the world in which we live. He has also stated that this film (along with the other entries in the Qatsi trilogy) is intended to be experienced as they are, and it’s up to the viewer to interpret what the film truly means, though interpretations largely lean towards it being an environmentalist warning.
After the initial title and translation, scored with a low, bassy chanting of the film's title and grand cathedral organ, we’re presented with a cave painting of humanoid figures, surrounding a taller figure, adorned with a crown. From there we’re shown the launch of Apollo 11, fading back into the desert, at which point the score shifts; at first with a gentle, calming movement of woodwind and strings, emulating the feeling of flying as we are shown clouds, waves, and an overhead shot of a cultivated flower field, then becoming more urgent, blasting the audience with frantic bleats of the brass section, as we are presented with a mining truck and the reveal of power lines all over the desert, which was presented as barren just moments earlier. Perhaps the film suggests that in our pursuit of the sky, we have become aliens on our own planet.
From there, we see more of our intrusion into the desert: a dam, a power plant, oil fields, testing of the atom bomb, possibly hinting at the paradoxical nature of using materials reaped from the Earth to destroy the Earth. Fricke shows us car parks, airplane runways, military bases and finally, a city full of skyscrapers; a portrait of a landscape successfully terraformed by man, or so it seems until we see the decay and demolition of monolithic buildings, an ever-present facet of human development. Cars and food are made, people shop and drive to and from work, and children play, all in stunning time lapses. With so much going on, everything bears the same sense of urgency: equally as important when examined up close, and yet equality as unimportant when viewed in the grand scheme of the planet.
Gradually, more and more of modern life is explored in various ways, including a section comprised of slow-motion footage of people being filmed candidly, cutting whenever someone appears to notice the camera. Footage of cars driving is sped up even further, and we pull back, revealing cities from above, before juxtaposing them with layouts of circuit boards, and we are yet again shown the launch of Apollo 11, before fading to footage of the failed launch of the first Atlas-Centaur spaceship. Finally, we are yet again given translations for Koyaanisqatsi, as well as for the lyrics used in the final movement of the score, and we see the pictograph from the beginning. Are we the taller being adorned with the crown, or are we the figures looking up at them, doomed to forever reach for that power?
For all its technical achievements, Koyaanisqatsi is ultimately a hypnotic and meditative experience. Exciting yet repetitive images are edited frenetically to a musical score that honestly is a journey all of its own, resulting in a film unlike anything that came before. One could assume that it all boils down to a singular cautionary message, but there's such a wondrous sense of curiosity in the exploration of urban life that it could be just as easily viewed as a celebration of our evolution. Perhaps we need not have it one way or the other, when there is so much beauty to be found in both nature and humanity.
Koyaanisqatsi was shown at Cinema Nova as a special retrospective screening.