Koyaanisqatsi
“Koyaanisqatsi” is a non-narrative film and
should as such be considered as an art film. I knew that going in, so I skipped
reading up on the movie before watching, in order to make my own experience
with the movie. By leaving out a narrative, the sensation of watching the movie
becomes the message and in a sense the narrative. It is a movie to be felt.
The imagery of the movie is either in time
lapse or in slow motion with the speed of either varying. We start out with
natural landscapes of deserts. Empty land devoid of anything. Then we switch to
human made deserts. Sad, ruined land, empty housing areas, nuclear bomb explosions
and superhighways. The impression here is that these human wastelands is as
devoid of life as the natural wastelands.
Scenes now switch between pictures of human
life and machinery, both in time lapse so it appears extra hectic and with
stressing music. The scenes with people and the scenes with machinery look
uncannily similar as if we are all cogs and wheels in a big machine. It is
stressing to look at. Factory workers at high speed, thousands of cars
criss-crossing city streets, people coming off an escalator very much like the
sausages at the factory. Only when we then switch to the individual human do we
switch to slow motion as if juxtapositioning the person with the machine that
is our modern life.
The speed of the time lapse keeps increasing
until at the climax everything is a blur. Even daily, harmless routines like
eating and watching television looks hectic and inhuman. Then, finally we see
the grid of the city and the grid of an electronic circuit board, and they look
very much the same. We are all small electrons buzzing around in the big
machine.
After this we see pictures of individual
characters seemingly left outside, stepping away from the paths of everybody
else and a rocket exploding in mid air along with a number of other scenes of
destruction. The message I get is that we need to step off this race or it will
end badly.
The execution of all this is of high
quality, the pictures are sharp, the editing skilful and the music is haunting.
It is a bit long for what it is trying to do, an hour and half was too much for
a single sitting for me, but it is fascinating if rather stressful to look at.
It is also difficult not to be convinced by
the movie. Our daily life at high speed is very much like a machine. Something
about the time lapse takes away our humanity and when that is combined with the
sheer number of people, it all looks like a frantic anthill. I used to go
frequently to Beijing and Seoul and there I got that same feeling.
Does this mean that we all need to step off
the hamster wheel and break with conformity? I do believe this is the message
here, but maybe less can do it. Maybe this is a warning to not let go of our
individuality and to find a balance between being a member of the big machine
and being ourselves in our own little world.
The end credit tells us that “Koyaanisqatsi”
means “life out of balance” (among a number of similar translations) in the
Hopi language, so I suppose we need to find that balance and avoid getting
eaten up by the machine. Maybe watch “Mordern Times” again...
“Koyaanisqatsi” is an interesting art film.
In comparison with “Sans Soleil” which I reviewed a few weeks ago, it is a lot
easier to interpret, though the individual picture were far more interesting in
that other movie. Or maybe it is just because I am going to Japan in a few days.
Still, I do recommend it as one of the better non-narrative movies I have
watched.