Entertaining, moving, and interesting. In fact jaw-droppingly engrossing.
OK, I’m nuts about the 1920s. But still. See it sometime. It’s as vivid a window into another time as you’re likely to see on film.
Just one thing. As the train pulls through the yards into Berlin, you will see a lot of cattle cars. Remind yourself that it’s 1927…
I saw it for the first time about 15 years ago. I liked it then, still like it now. I don’t care about the message it was trying to portray. The visuals were nice and the music was fitting, IMHO.
Where was thee in '83? Try and forget all that you’ve observed during the technological and global economy explosion of the last 22 years and then imagine how seeing the movie for the first time might affect you.
In it’s time it was a monumental work.
My feelings are along the line of jackelope’s. Beautiful, compelling visuals and music, simplistic and snobbish social commentary. I saw it when it first came out and bought the DVD recently.
I liked it when it first came out. In SLC it played the commercial theaters first. Then it became an art-house staple.
My main criticism is the same as jackelope’s #2, and I’ve been saying it since I first saw it:
The other main problem is It’s Too Damn Long.
But that one, single, unbroken take of the rocket taking off, exploding, and the one piece of flaming debris falling to earth, taking apparently forever, is an absolute killer. It’s very close to the end of the film, and I think they realized it was their single best piece of celluloid.
I must agree that Glass’ music is nothing but torturously repetative arpeggiated wank. Aural wank set to mind-numbing visual wank is just a massive, near-lethal overdose of hard-core wank, and it was all I could to do keep myself from walking out half-way through. Sadly, I wanted to get into this woman’s pants, and she invited me to go, an admission I make with deep shame, because not even a little nooky is quite worth debasing oneself that way. It’s one of those rare efforts I hated so much I considered writing Glass a letter to tell just how loathesome I found his “art”. I thought better of it when I considered how impervious a mind must be to any remotely conventional concept of what artistry entails to produce such pretentious offal. I’d just be wasting more of my time on a guy whose only art is the con.
For amusement, I might direct you to King Missile’s “Glass”. At least the bastard inspired one good joke song.
The movie has not aged well because a lot of those shots and techniques found their way into advertising in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, so it looks kind of dated. And if you don’t like the Philip Glass, you’re not going to like Koyaanisqtsi one bit.
Well, the “message” is kind of dated, too. That was late-70’s environmentalism. I consider myself an environmentalist, and I don’t think “civilization bad”, because I like antibiotics, airplanes, and rock and roll. But hey, how much nuance can you get across in that format? Without words, it’s hard to get across the message “civilization and technology can be good or bad, depending on the way they are planned, the technology used, and the attitudes of the people who make up the civilizaton. Highly successful speicies often expand too fast and degrade their environment in such a way as to render their own survival impossible or more difficult, but since we have the power of reason and the ability to look at the past, both historic and geologic, we should strive to learn from history and apply our reason to finding ways we can live sustainably.” Philip Glass, “Bob” give him slack, just can’t convey that much information.
You’re on to something here, and I suggest that this introduces an alternate reading for the film than the one you’re taking away from it. Man is a part of nature, and his creations can be just as beautiful as the creations of nature–indeed, they can be considered creations of nature. The scenes of the freeways at night are juxtaposed with circuit boards and microscopic views of circulatory systems. Man’s creations are often a mirror of natural creation. Perhaps there’s a bit of nuance in the film after all.
It was a movie made by cinematographers, for cinematographers. It’s not so much about nature vs. man as it is about taking the latest and best camera equipment places it had never been before and taking kickass shots. In this case, the medium is the message, even more than normal. Seriously, on which field has the film had more impact–cinematography or environmentalism?
I like the film, but I think it suffers under the weight of all of the baggage that has been placed on it. It’s pretty moving pictures with a minimalist soundtrack. It’s an avant guarde experiment and I think you’ve got take it on that level. I liked about half of Powaqqatsi and haven’t even bothered to check out the third one. Nor do I intend to.
That couldn’t POSSIBLY be the reason I enjoyed it so much.
Could it?
Well, maybe.
I was going to pop in here and say that it was most definitely not the first of it’s kind. Walloon beat me to it. ::shakes fist::
I’ve seen Man with a Movie Camera and Berlin: Symphony of a City. I’ve also seen Dead Birds, Robert Gardner’s ethnographic documentary with NO commentary whatsoever. I’ve not seen Koyaanisqatsi, as my Experimental Film professor did not think it was worthy. 
It saddens me a little that people do think it was the first of it’s kind, because both the above movies were so well done, and really rather mesmerizing.
I love Glass’s score to The Thin Blue Line (1988), but hated the music in this film.
I’m right with you, up to the suggestion that the nuance was intentionally in the film. I saw it a few months ago, having no preconceived notion of what I was going into or what the message would be (I just knew it had music by Philip Glass), and I didn’t pick up on any complex message about people and their works being part of nature; the combination of music and image seemed clearly intended to show how Man comes along and screws everything up.
I’d love to think that Reggio intentionally showed us that the city itself can be a thing of beauty, order, and structure, and thus showed some deeper inquiry into the subject, but frankly I just didn’t see it. I think that, if that were his intent, he could definitely have done so; he could have juxtaposed a beaver dam with the Hoover Dam, or something along those lines, for example.
At the risk of opening a GREAT BIG can of worms, I’d point out that people living in crowded cities are, in a way, doing the best thing they can do for the environment, which is fucking it up as little as possible. They drive shorter distances, take up less room (especially apartment dwellers), and are more likely to use public transportation. Reggio could have made some points like this (he’s obviously a masterful film editor), but didn’t. I still think the message, even if he intended it to be otherwise, comes off as simplistic and one-dimensional.
I reiterate, though, how amazed and awed I was by the final looooong shot of the rocket taking off, blowing up, and coming back to earth. Pessimistic and anti-scientific, but that was some truly astounding footage.
I also liked the speeded-up footage of people going through a subway station, juxtaposed with a hot dog factory cranking them out. I laughed out loud at that.
(I haven’t seen Berlin: Symphony of a City, but I’ve seen Man With a Movie Camera and loved it.)
Good decision. IMHO, it’s a piece of crap. (though the score is pretty good if you dig Glass).
Reality Chuck said something similar above. As I’m not likely to get a chance to see Koya anytime soon, can you (or anyone) give me examples of the kinds of shots and techniques this movie pioneered?
Not meaning to cast doubt at all … just trying to get some “visual Cliffs notes” about this movie.
I don’t know if Reggio’s intention in the freeway-as-circulatory-system scenes was to suggest what I took away from it, but it doesn’t really matter. If SDMB discussions of Showgirls have taught me anything, it is that the artist’s intentions are less important than what’s on the page/canvas/screen. if you can see it and make a decent case for it, it’s there. One of the prime tenents of postmodernism is that the audience and aritst have equal, complimentary roles in art.
But Showgirls still sucks.
I’m sure there are others on the board more qualified to speak to this (ArchiveGuy, for example), but there are a few shots that have been endlessly copied. There are several timelapse shots in the “city” section where the camera looks up at a modern, wall-of-glass (no Philip pun intended) skyscraper while the clouds above fly by at impossible speeds. The aforementioned timelapse shots of freeways at night where the cars become streaks of light while the cityscape stands stark still may have been done before, but it was done better in Koyaanisqatsi than I’ve ever seen it done. And the Madonna video for “Express Yourself” owes a lot to the opening strip-mine sequence in Powaqqatsi. That’s just off the top of my head. There’s a lot more.
My friends and I fancy ourselves as amature filmmakers. We have a theory that Koyaanisqatsi seems to hold it’s self to:
If you have boring footage and want to make it cool, either speed it up, slow it down, or play it backwards.
I had to watch this waste of time in my film class about a year ago. I still want my 90 minutes back.
Ya know, it kind of reminds me of when Bart and Lisa go see a stock film festival in an episode of the Simpsons.
The first time I saw Koyaanisqatsi, I realized that this was the film Madonna’s video for “Ray of Light” had been ripping off.
bordelond–all 3 qatsi films are available through Netflix. And I know Netflix does do 2-week free trial offers. That might be a good way to see them (if you want to).
I liked it. I saw it soon after seeing a showing of student time-motion study pieces and it seemed to me to be the ultimate time-motion study. I also particularly liked the soundtrack. Though it is repetitive, the quality comes from the subtle changes that grow throughout each piece until it is completely different from where it started but by subtle enough differences that you often do not notice the change. Then, finally, it comes full cirlce to where it started. It is currently in my car CD player.
And in Naqoyqatsi, they add invert the colors to that list.
I really like the music. I think some of the visuals are pretty cool. And message? Eh, who cares?
I’ve noticed this as well. When I was first messing around with editing video, I’d run around shooting whatever I saw with the camera and then mess around with editing it together later. I discovered early on that if you slow it down and add a cello, anything becomes profound.
My God. You know you’re running low on DVDs to watch when Koyaanisqatsi makes it to the top of your queue. I didn’t think I could be so bored. Are you supposed to smoke dope to enjoy this? I see better nature photography on Survivor. The soundtrack was to music, what diet, caffeine free, no artificial colors or flavors soda is to, say a nice glass of wine.
I’m a glutton for punishment I guess. I then tried to watch Powaqqatsi. Have you ever been so incredibly bored that the boredom itself formed a sort of energy that caused you to jump off the couch, take the disc out, stick it in its envelope, put on your shoes, a coat, and walk briskly down to the nearest mailbox and then feel so much better you got that horrible “movie” out of your house and you’ll know better than to ever try watching one of these things ever again?
Cause that’s what it just did to me.
People praised this shit? What were we doing back then? Besides crack.