Koyaanisqatsi / Powaqqatsi (Box Set) (DVD)

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
Story	Outstanding

Advantages:	Utterly beautiful, visually and musically
Disadvantages:	Say what?

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

It would be possible to go through Koyaanisqatsi scene by scene and yet it would also be impossible. There is a sense of mysticism to this film, most likely intentional as the title: Koyaanisqatsi comes from the Native American Hopi tribe, which is explained as the film finishes. For those of a curious disposition, Koyaanisqatsi means

1. Crazy life. 2. Life in turmoil. 3. Life disintegrating. 4. Life out of balance. 5. A state of life that calls for another way of living.

I’m guessing that a great many of you are asking yourself what this film is as I’m clearly pointing to the fact that this is no ordinary motion picture, and Koyaanisqatsi isn’t at all. It has a narrative, but in an entirely different sense to going down to your local multiplex and seeing a Hollywood blockbuster, which is not to suggest that there is anything wrong with doing so; Koyaanisqatsi is simply the kind of life that should be pretentious, self-indulgence-as-high-art rubbish.

But it’s not. Why?

Koyaanisqatsi is a film built out of images. Some still, some in motion, some long, some sped up, some slowed down. There are no characters (in the conventional sense) and there is no story to speak of. As I say, Koyaanisqatsi is roughly 80 minutes of gloriously directed cinematography, with a narrative. Don’t forget the title has a clear, if obscure meaning and it’s inclusion as the film ends heralds the meaning of the film, though this is clear enough as the film flows by.

The film begins with a slow zoom onto the image of cave painting. Then into what appears to be a furious flurry of ice flying slow-motion at the screen as something unclear in the background roars. Then we move out into the Grand Canyon; the camera soaring through the air gracefully allowing the beauty of Monument Valley to reveal itself peacefully. Watching this I was for a moment sent back to John Ford westerns, imagining the titular Stagecoach roaring into view, stopping at the image of John Wayne carrying his saddle. The film builds slowly over this natural beauty, the camera lazily panning across the majestic landscape. Images flow into one another beautifully, the editing remarkably subtle and yet stunningly clever. The constant change between static and moving never jars, never feels like the filmmakers are being lazy. Moreover no one image is ever allowed to outstay its welcome. Any slowness is a reflection of the ageless, timelessness of the subject.

There are images purely of rolling clouds that are so stunning, so immaculately beautiful that it is impossible to describe, only by viewing yourself can you understand. It is all the more beautiful for the thought that a cloud on a clear summer’s day may be welcome but never so hypnotically romantic and visually staggering.

But soon we are moving into a beach: a woman lazing on the sand with her baby. Slowly the camera pans and we expect the blue of the ocean only to be met with the horror of some power plant, huge over the sand, casting an ugly shadow over the lazing beachgoers. Here is the first indicator of the films progression as slowly, the film shifts towards water processing plants, factories. Don’t think this boring, the images are often stark but the angles, the height and distance of the camera render their images unique and sometimes there are suggestions of the natural world that we have witnessed earlier.

And so on to the city; here speeded-up images of pedestrians careening through the streets, crashing down escalators; where solitary travellers that wait appear momentarily alive as all around them people disappear before they can be seen. There are those images of traffic, of building at night, between days and night, with shadows rolling over city blocks that one expects, but never have they appeared so gorgeous, have their images been filled with such meaning.

Scenes in the car plant, where the people move so quickly and yet the cars on their ordered way move so slowly, are entrancing, their symbolism obvious; the conveyor belt of life; the direction of society. Yet there is beauty here too, close ups of the greens and blues and intricate beauty of microchips seen in a way never before imagined. This is stunning work, the everyday so meaningful and beautiful and yet the grim truth of it all is so apparent. Perhaps it is best summed up in one of the images the filmmakers have clearly contrived: five Vegas waitresses, with their 1980s big hair, fake smiles and tans and make-up an inch thick.

We are in a world without balance, a world once slow and real, ready for contemplation but the reality of real life is harsher but in its own way utterly beautiful when viewed in the right manner. There are also analogies and similarities, the camera gliding through the sky on the back of a fighter plane echoes floating through Death Valley, and the images of the giant moon moving behind the office block seems remarkably natural, as if the building was a solid, natural piece of the landscape.

Finally, we return to the ice cascading into the camera to reveal: ahh, that’s a secret now; then the cave paintings again and Koyaanisqatsi is explained.

But I have until now purposefully not explained perhaps the main reason why Koyaanisqatsi is so successful. Koyaanisqatsi is a collaboration with composer Philip Glass. I have a little Glass in my CD collection and he is a wonder. His music is based on subtly shifting repetitions; the use of voice as instrument and is one of those modern composers who is manages to embrace modernity without ever falling into the trap of becoming pretentious or self-indulgent.

Glass’ music is integral to the film because one has to remember where Koyaanisqatsi is meant to be watched: in a cinema. Cinemas have often been referred to as being a womblike experience; with the darkness and silence enfolding you in its embrace. But there, on the screen, heralded by the faint phosphorescence that cuts knife like through the air, are images to beguile, delight and hypnotise. Sliding past the images, through and around them is sound: words, music and reverberations of the everyday. Glass’ music is the glue to the film; a hypnotic, repetitive, quite beautiful surge of power that mirrors the images cascading upon the eye and accentuating their meaning. There is no battle going on between sound and vision but a perfect marriage; complementing, adding depth and sense of time and place. As the visuals sore so does Glass’ music, as the film progresses to hectic, chaotic cityscapes the music echoes the speed and cyclic nature of what is seen. In this Glass, with his cyclic, repetitious choice is perfect, nigh on inspired.

Without Glass’ music Koyaanisqatsi would not be unendurable but certainly less of an experience. Watching the film I thought after 25 minutes, with an hour left that either it would become even more stunning or that I would turn it off within 5 minutes. Switch off? I think not. I can only say that I was genuinely hypnotised by what I saw. It is somehow emotional; I felt elated, almost overwhelmed and this was watching it in the darkness in my bedroom on an old, humming TV and not in the womblike confines of the cinema. The simple poetry of the images and the textures of the music struck me so powerfully and so surprisingly, for I genuinely expected to be disappointed, that I found myself utterly lost in Koyaanisqatsi. The outside world fell away leaving nothing but the faces on screen, the shards of city lights and lightening-like traffic. Even the everyday images, the workers in the car plants were filmed that something so industrial was rendered meaningful and beautiful and instead of switching off I felt entranced. I’m repeating this sense of hypnotism I realise but it is the kind of film that grabs you. It grabs you so utterly because it has to, it is its purpose. If Koyaanisqatsi had failed to suck me in so totally I may have lasted the 80 minutes out of curiosity, waiting for the end rather than remaining motionless, soaring with the camera and tearing through the city streets with the traffic and people careening through the urban cityscapes.

I haven’t even tried to recall all that is to be seen and heard in Koyaanisqatsi as it is not possible. I feel also that I haven’t been able to explain the breadth of feeling that affected me. This film just plain should be endurably dull. It really should. Its success is so remarkable that I am ablaze with respect, perhaps even a little jealousy. It is a stunning visual ride, also the images it juxtaposes are so powerful and yet intelligent and simple that it is not a bland, mindless film based purely on aesthetics. Koyaanisqatsi’s brain guides its heart and through them both is an emotion, intellectually stimulating experience.

Go watch.

Koyaanisqatsi has generated (rather than spawned) two sequels: Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi, neither which I have seen though I have the former and the soundtrack to the latter, which is very similar musically to Koyaanisqatsi though even more brilliant, with Yo-Yo Ma being his usual superlative self.

Also, if anyone is interested there are some, admittedly small, screenshots of the film of Philip Glass’ Website
http://www.philipglass.com

Now if you want to buy this it’ll cost you £18.99 in a double pack with Powaqqatsi (Naqoyqatsi is not available yet unless you want to export it from the States), though I’m sure it’s cheaper elsewhere. Alternatively head down to your local HMV as they usually have this in their 2 DVD for £20 sale, so for almost the same price as at Amazon you can get yourself another film too!