Slashdot Mirror
Qatsi Trilogy to be Completed
Karl_Hungus writes "Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi, the first two installments of Reggio and Glass' trilogy are to be joined by Naqoyqatsi, due out next month. Naqoy.com has some stills, and some fascinating Flash. A brief discussion of the technical side includes the figure of 3.5 terabytes of images collected in the making of the film."
I'd like to buy a vowel...
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
Is anyone else very confused?
That being said, it's not traditional geek material, but it's fascinating and wonderful
I made a post, no matter how sophmoric on my SITE about this film. The originals in the trilogy are absolutely stunning and breathtaking. With the inclusion of digital technology and even simple "conventional" improvments in film technology, this part definately shapes up to be the best.
:).
If you haven't seen these movies before go see them at your rep theatre. Simply the most brilliant use of image and film I've ever seen. Esp, Koyaanisqatsi.
Umm, and apparently they are really good if you smoke green stuff. Not that I'd know anything about that
Btw, Incase you haven't heard Philip Glass is preforming in a town near you. Doing either live accompaniment to the Trilogy or new work to shorts by Godfrey Reggio (the director) and Atom Egoyan.
Go see it.
I don't know how many of you have actually seen any of these films, but in my opinion, the first film Koyaanisqatsi is one of the finest films ever made. It has no plot, no dialogue, simply 90 minutes of footage set to a brilliant score by Philip Glass. They finally released the first two films in the series on DVD September th 29th, and you'd better believe I had them preordered weeks in advance. I highly reccomend that anyone who has not already seen them do so, but be sure you have time to devote to REALLY watching them, trust me, it is worth it.
Ok..maybe I'm not as big of a geek as I thought - but what the hell is this item talking about? Quatsiwhatsi? What is this? What's going on?
"Moderate drinking can help prevent amputated limbs" -- Abigail Zuger, NYTimes, 12/31/02
Seriously, I generally try not to complain about the topics they post on, but what the fuck is this crap?
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Knock knock.
Who's there?
Knock knock.
Who's there?
Knock knock.
Who's there, dammit?
Knock knock.
Who the hell is it?
Philip Glass.
> Is anyone else very confused?
Yeah, probably the FBI agents assigned to monitor Slashdot. I can see them frantically flipping through their printous of the Jargon File even as we speak.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
In my opinion, everyone should watch this movie once a year. It really puts things in perspective. And besides that, the visual and audio artistry are incredible, although Philip Glass isn't everyone's cup of tea.
Koyaanisqatsi is partly about the modern lifestyle, but in the more general sense, it is about humanity itself. It takes the us out of our routine life, up into a wider viewpoint, where individuality loses its meaning and we can see our lives as closer to what they are. Individual movements blend grossly to show the patterns of life. We are not unique. We follow the same routine. We swarm.
There are great visual ironies to the film. After showing clips of people rushing around like mad, it shows a person playing Robotron like mad. After showing a bird's eye view of a city, it shows a circuit board.
Some say that this movie is an environmentalist, or leftist in some way. I think the movie trancends political viewpoints. Watch it once a year to get back your sense of scale. We are statistics.
From just this sentence, it sounds a lot like Baraka (1992), another 'movie'/feature/whatever, that was basically just a bunch of beautiful and mesmerising pieces of footage placed together. No real story, just footage of beautiful places around the world. I would recommend renting the Baraka DVD if you're ever bored one night.
Baraka also had a wonderful score/sound production. I'd be sure that the Qatsi Trilogy will too.
"A great movie. It was incredibly brought about with the scenic views and such an interesting plot. It was a long 87 minutes. It was very waffling and it got me standing up in my seats. I am a very heavy man and I love to watch movies. Of the many movies I've seen this ranks among the top ten. A wonderful story, rent it and enjoy."
Apparently this film is very waffling, especially among very heavy men who like to watch movies.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
"alone with his orchestra" seems like a bit of an oxymoron...
Glass's ensembles can do some pretty top-notch stuff, though rumor is one of the trumpet players on Koyaanisqatsi had to be gotten really drunk before he'd record his part.
I just hope the pipe organ is back. Those low D's really shake a theatre.
This sig intentionally left justified.
> although Philip Glass isn't everyone's cup of tea.
Yeah, some pundit once described modern composer John Cage as "a Philip Glass with brains". I think that's way too harsh, though admittedly my response to Glass varies from piece to piece. Some don't interest me, and some are tasty but don't wear too well, but a few are f*king incredible.
To wit, IMO one of the best legal highs you can get is to listen to Glass's Akhnaten while lying on the floor in a pitch black room with the speakers suitably arranged.
YMMV, of course. If you're fond of boy bands, this definitely won't be for you. It's an opera, but not of the "fat lady" type your local classical station plays on Saturday afternoons. The lead role is, in fact, sung by a male soprano. The structure, orchestration, and vocals are austere by traditional operatic standards, more like the Who's Tommy than something by Mozart or Rossini. Most of the libretto is taken from ancient Egyptian texts, though one song is in Hebrew - presumably a nod to Freud's famous theory. (I rather suspect that there are several subtexts to this piece.)
If anyone does decide to give this a try, get the CBS Masterworks edition, use a changer (yuck) so you won't have to get up just when you get into the groove, and set the volume so that the opening bars are rather quiet, so you won't blow your eardrums together later.
It's not perfect; in fact I would probably have cut out one scene both for the length and the redundancy, but for most Slashdotters it is probably unlike anything you've ever heard, and the atmosphere is so rich you can get lost in it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"one-sided propaganda". Not to be sided with propaganda that gives an equal voice to differing viewpoints. Oh wait, that woudn't be propaganda any more, now, would it?
Reggio is a documentarian. The images he chooses to cut together may have a spin that tells his story, but the nature of his work is, by definition, allowing the images to speak for themselves.
Don't like his ideals? Don't see his movie. Not like box-office is a big driving force in his work to begin with.
This sig intentionally left justified.
Anybody know where that's from? It may not be as great as I recall it, but it's been bugging me for a long time trying to recall where I heard it. And yeah - I like classical music, baroque mostly. I even like a chunk of modern classical. I don't particularly go in for Philip Glass, however.
--
Evan (no SF reference)
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
In 1500, Europe was a shithole. It would still be a shithole today if Europeans didn't colonize the rest of the world, steal the resources, and bring the resources back to Europe.
And they used these stolen resources to get a lot of people hooked on all kinds of luxuries and a higher standard of living. They used the stolen resources and slavery to create a middle class where before there was only a small high class and the rest of the population were extremely poor.
Lots of poor people are not consumers. A small number of very rich people are not consumers either. Only the middle class make effective consumers and made it possible to bootstrap an industrial revolution.
Without the fruits of this industrial revolution the countries robbed by colonization could not have fed their exponentially growing populations so in a way they are getting some compensation for the cruelty and injustice inflicted upon them by colonization.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
I submitted this story about a month ago and of course it got rejected. Now it gets accepted and it lacks all of the *good* information, such as the fact that a Quicktime trailer has been out for over a month now for Naqoyqatsi.
:) If you buy the Baraka DVD, try to find the original DVD edition (not the special collector's edition), I've heard lots of complaints that the film->DVD transfer is better in the original DVD.
The first two (Koyanisqatsi and Powaqatsi) have just been mass released on DVD, in advance of the upcoming theater release of Naqoyqatsi (these words are roughly taken from the Hopi language).
Godfrey Reggio is an interesting chap -- he grew up in a monastery and when he left, he turned to film. Probably the best thing he ever did was to find Ron Fricke, who is the directory of photography for all 3 qatsi movies. Ron Fricke put out his own film, Baraka -- the quality of the photography in Baraka is WAY better than in the qatsi movies (because it was filmed 70mm camera rigs of Fricke's own design instead of the 35mm that was available for the qatsi movies), and Baraka takes a less moralizing approach to the imagery. Not to mention Baraka's music is better -- Philip Glass is OK, but the qatsi movies aren't his best work.
And to the slashdot editors -- I know this might get modded down as offtopic, but do a better job. Why not look back through your old rejected stories when you're about to post a "new" (shitty) one?
"one-sided propaganda"? What, as opposed to "fair and balanced propaganda"? [chuckle]
He has a point of view, and he expresses it. This isn't journalism, where balance is a virtue. It's art, where depth of feeling is a virtue. They are very moving works; it's unlikely a viewer will walk away indifferent to the experience. Angry perhaps, but not indifferent.
If you don't like his message about the dangers of technology, perhaps you should see a movie where technology is heroic? How about The Matrix? Oh... wait, no, that's not going to work. Terminator? No, that's no better... Dr. Strangelove? Missed again. Logan's Run? Tron? Gattaca? Minority Report? 2001? Blade Runner? Akira?
Perhaps Mr. Reggio isn't alone in his view?
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
The interesting thing about Koyaanisqatsi, though, is that it doesn't really preach anything, as it doesn't have any words. Well, there's a little bit at the end, I suppose, but the point is that you're shown a bunch of images from which you can draw your own conclusions.
Certainly those images that are chosen are there to make you think about particular things, but it's not like Reggio's got Tom Cruise up on the screen yelling "won't someone please, please think about the environment!?!"
Also, while it may be propaganda, I would argue that no one had really showed things from that perspective before Koyaanisqatsi, or at least, they hadn't done so nearly as effectively. And while it may be one-sided against consumerism and technology (which is a debatable point), it's only an 87 minute movie. I'm sure I probably see 87 minutes of Dell commercials in any given month. I don't see them giving equal time to folks like Reggio.
Personally, I think Koyaanisqatsi is more than just propaganda on one side of some issue, for the simple reason that if you asked a dozen people what Koyaanisqatsi is about, they'd all give you different answers. When I watch it, there are certain technological aspects that I find quite beautiful and natural (the shots of clouds reflecting off glass-and-steel buildings, the speeded-up shots of city traffic at night that look a lot like a circulatory system).
It makes you think, is all, and shows you the world in a way you probably haven't seen it before. The reaction you have to those images probably tells you more about yourself than it does about the movie.
Monkeytreats
Cheesh,
Finally an interesting post on Slashdot, first in a long time, and this is what happens...
I know you all want your dose of M$ did this today, they are bad boo hooo... but come on, this little website here is supposed to open doors to new things to al of you jaded hax00rs (and overload servers while it's at it), now that something comes up, all of you are acting like little kids, making fun of the new kid in school because you don't know him (or her your choise). I understand that some of you don't go for this 'artsy fartsy' stuff, but some slashdotters do.
Just because in your head your're thinking Nago... naqo.. what a funny name... doesn't mean you have to post. Please, there's enough garbage in this world, I expect slashdot to be a little better.
That's it for my rant, mod me to hell.
Any suggestion on where to buy the K/P 2-DVD set for
region 2? I've checked amazon, but only the US one
carries it, and it's region 1. (For Baraka you can find the region 2 on the french site).
Thanks in advance guys!
Not that it will make a big difference to the viewer? Why is it interesting to see which choice they make?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
i'm going to be seeing koyaanisqatsi oct 13 in san francisco with the philip glass ensemble orchestra playing the score of the film live. apparently they're doing a tour, coming to about a dozen cities in america in october in conjunction with the release of the 3rd of the trilogy. tour dates/locations can be found here:
http://www.koyaanisqatsi.org/events/events.php
there's other info on koyaanisqatsi.org, as well.
Long ago, when studying film scoring as part of my degree towards music, our final project for the course was to write music for a portion of Koyaanisqatsi.
I had to write music for the very end, when the rocket goes into the air, and explodes, falling, before an image of a native American work of art fades into view (then the credits).
Thinking about the film's point, I thought I'd write some of the most contrived music I could imagine for the rocket scene. To that end, I serialized the '90210' zip code (in not-so-fond memory of the soap-opera bearing that name) into musical notes, using that sequence to guide everything, from the rhythms, harmonies, and melodies of the poor score. It had precisely the effect I wanted. A work of music utterly devoid of soul.
It's amusing to me, now, to learn that Philip Glass rejected serialism when he was only 19 years old. I knew what I was doing to the movie was dirty, but I had no idea of the full depths I had sunk.
And so it goes.
Next year, January 11th or so. Find information (and book tickets) at the Barbican Centre. It's being performed in the Barbican Hall and Philip Glass will be there.
Tickets are £20 for the best seats, £10 for the.. 'worst'.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Reading this info about Naqoyqatsi, it seems like it's like DJ Shadow. The filmmakers have taken 'samples' of other videos and remixed them into something new and cool.
The first two films were not like this, but I look forward to this one anyway.
mogorific carpentry experiments
There are better descriptions scattered below between the flame bait and other comments.
... like all the cars zooming along the streets of New York at night, stopping and going at bank after bank of traffic lights)
The first film (Koyaanisqatsi) came out when I was at college and was recommended as a film to watch while stoned. I don't/didn't do drugs so I went and saw it straight and still enjoyed it very much.
It's basically beautiful cinematography using speeded up and slowed down footage of things like the moon rising behind office blocks, clouds shooting across the sky, thousands of people zooming up and down escalators etc. intercut to show the beauty and balance in nature and the "out of balance" city life (but even the city footage is glorious and has been used in so very very many ads since
And with almost hypnotic music by Philip Glass.
If you like that sort of thing, then this is the among the best examples. If you don't, then don't watch it. Some people like this stuff, some like slasher films, so go to see the next Jim Carrey/Adam Sandler movie, everyone is different.
But it's not SciFi, Anime or anything like that, so I'm not sure why it is Slash-dot. Except that the strong rhythmic patterns in the music and the camera trickery is the sort of stuff that a lot of us nerds happen to enjoy!
As busy as he was then, he has stayed among the most prolific composers of his generation. He has produced rock albums (mmmm, "Polygon" I think the group was, short-lived early 80's "math-rock" new wave-ish), as well as scores from operas and operettas (he did a wild and disturbing version of Poe's "Tell Tale Heart" which does not seem to get produced much for some reason) down to solo piano pieces. I have seen him on tour, even, at local small colleges, playing some of his piano stuff. The general public tendency is not to think of composers as "working their asses off," but Glass does, still to this day.
All that said, his score for Powaqaatsi was dreadful IMO, but the Kowyaanasqatsi CD has travelled with me from work, car, home since it was first released. It is brilliant, in every sense of the word.
If any of this has made you think twice (or even for the first time) about checking Glass' stuff out, and you're looking for an accessible place to start, I can heartily recommend The Photographer, a "music-theater" piece he did about the life of Edward Muybridge, the photographer whose pictures of horses in motion first clued us in that there are times when the beasts' feet aren't all on the ground (Glass has a knack for selecting bizarre and -- dare I say it? -- geeky topics).
If you're looking for early and "seminal," and/or want to get out of the lease on your apartment, go with "North Star."
Not quite true.
The merchantile systems systems setup by the Imperial powers gave them cheap sources of raw materials (raw materials that were not available to other Empires) and a captive market for manufactured goods.
The French and Indian War, which was the impeteus for the taxation that led to the American Revolution, was actually a part of the larger 30 Years War between England and France. When colonial militia was defeated repeatedly by the French and Iroquois forces, British regular infantry established garrisions in New York and New England to protect the colonies -- which was quite expensive.
The British Empire became richer because it focused it attentions on British India, which was a veritable gold mine of spices and material, as well as a massive captive market.
By the time the 20th Century rolled around, the economies of scale achieved by the industrial revolution made the European and US markets so powerful that captive colonial markets quickly became impovrished backwaters.
The British Empire was the largest and smartest. Spain mined so much gold, they created a hyper-inflation which eventually bankrupted most of the nobility.
So while it's not far to say that Europe was built entirely on the backs of it's colonies, it would have been impossible for European powers to raise enough capital to do everything they did without sucking down colonial resources.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
In my opinion, everyone should watch this movie once a year. It really puts things in perspective.
Like...Wow, you don't have to have talent to score a movie? That kind of perspective?
Granted, I think Glass is an idiot generally, mainly because he practices "Emperor's Clothes" minimalism, where "you know, if I make some pretty sounds and repeat them endlessly rather than actually working to craft something and claim it's part of an intellectual tradition instead of Backstreet Boys for yuppies, Profit!!!!" Steve Reich also took an experiment that should have remained a grad school exercize to influence later, real music to ridiculous extremes--but he's far less pretentious and actually has talent. (Good minimalism is practiced by John Adams.)
Case in point: there's a big sweep up a cliff that then breaks out over the water of a lake. Now basic timing of music to movie isn't hard (I've done it by hand, and accuracy within a 3rd of a second is pretty easy), and Glass's mind-numbing 1-5-1 theme keeps repeating as you sweep up this cliff. It's SUPPOSED to burst into a moment of actual chords when you break out over the water. And it does--about two seconds previous. It doesn't sound like much, but I was watching and thinking "uh, ok, what am I supposed to see?" Then two beats later, the water appeared. It wasn't an error of tracking the two together, it was Glass's error.
The images are nicely done in a technical sense, but the "irony" they project is not even close to new, either in technique or style. It was kind of hackneyed five minutes after Metropolis was released.
Someone else mentioned this movie was best enjoyed with chemical alteration of your bloodstream. I couldn't agree more. In another context, though, it's called "beer-goggling."
Or rather, it's interesting for about 10 minutes, and then it's repetitious, and then it's tedious, and then it's just pedantic.
It's a SPECIAL EFFECT. It's a whole movie about ONE SPECIAL EFFECT.
Don't get me wrong, when it was made the imagery was fairly ground-breaking, so it's got artistic significance. On the other hand, you can see the same thing in beer commercials now.
It's like the musical Tomfoolery: any given five minutes of it would be fine, but sitting through all of it becomes very tedious. (IMHO the book Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer is a perfect example of something that has its true name.) Why? Because it's just more and more of the same, and it GETS OLD. There is no plot or characterization to carry the movie along.
So, if you want to watch it, watch it on TV sometime, maybe it'll crop up on the Independant Film Channel or something.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
That indicates that the film was shot anamorphic and cropped for the laserdisc to be 4:3.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Yeah, it's the kind of item that if I had moderator points right now I'd want to give them to the submitter, or maybe to the guy who submitted three weeks ago, or even to Cowboy Neal for letting it through. Hey maybe I should just vote for him in more polls.
... fortunately given how history turned a not quite successful day ... I watched K & P back to back in a local art/nostalgia theatre, since sadly departed.
Not needing chemicals to get into trouble, my heaviest dose of K & P came at the end of a long winter's day outside municipal polling booths
Right now I have a problem with my P CD which unfortunately diappeared into an unnoticed slit between my car CD player and a defunct tape player when I was trying to put it in the CD slot during a recent interstate drive, but that isn't stopping me listening to it on iTunes as I type.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
is awesome. You have to check it out. http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/naqoyqatsi/.
You won't find these at your usual video store. I've only seen the first one. It is an "experience", but not your traditional "movie".
***General Consultant to the Human Race*** My opinions are free. You get what you pay for.
The simple proof is that European economies picked up once they got rid of their colonies. More money was spent on colonies than was generated from them.
Yes but. That doesn't prove they didn't steal, only that the strategy of theft needs to be done quickly. Get in, take the goods, and get out. The longer you stay the less profitable (and more dangerous) it gets.
Armies, navies, administration (including education and health care), all cost a lot of money that the colonies didn't return.
Makes my point for me. The longer you stay, the more it starts to cost.
Europe isn't rich because it stole but because it worked innovatively.
Compromise: Europe stole innovatively. It made use of the new things that it found and borrowed or stole. Without the orient, Europe would have no gunpowder or pasta. Without the Americas it would have no corn, potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco, squash, peppers, chocolate, coffee etc. There was far less famine in Europe after contact with the Americas than before.
The developed world is not rich because the rest of the world is poor. Its rich because it started using better methods to produce, manufacture and trade earlier.
Often those very methods were borrowed or stolen, though Europe had a fair share of innovation too. The main reason Europe succeeded so rapidly is becuase it applied those methods on a grand (often unsustainable) scale.
I fail to see how acknowledgment of this is Marxist (though I often hear this line from Marxist-leaning folk, I don't think it supports their ideology). The nations that Europe exploited those many years ago weren't Marxist.
Oh well...
I was just over at Netflix last month, to see whether they had Koyaanisqatsi for rent. Their little recommendation thing said:
"If you like Koyaanisqatsi, we think you may also enjoy: LA Lakers: NBA Finals 2000."
(When I told my girlfriend this story, expecting a perfunctory chuckle, she said "Wow, they have the 2000 Lakers DVD? Dude! I'm totally renting that!")
Can any Reggio/Shaq fans enlighten me as to a possible connection?
spawn_of_yog_sothoth
Knock-knock
:)
Who's there?
Knock-knock
Who's there?
Knock-knock
Who's there?
Knock-knock
Who's there?
Philip Glass
Glass-bashing aside, yes, these are some of the most beautiful movies ever made. With the "mute" on
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
Stupid hippies.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
If you don't like his message about the dangers of technology, perhaps you should see a movie where technology is heroic? How about The Matrix? Oh... wait, no, that's not going to work. Terminator? No, that's no better... Dr. Strangelove? Missed again. Logan's Run? Tron? Gattaca? Minority Report? 2001? Blade Runner? Akira?
For really pro-technology movies one probably has to go back to the cheesy monster-attacks-the-Earth flicks of the '50's. The ones where the white-coated scientist and his plucky prone-to-screaming female sidekick defeat the alien menace by utilizing clever inventions with glowing coils and giant computers with lots of blinky lights. Those were the days!
It makes you think, is all, and shows you the world in a way you probably haven't seen it before. The reaction you have to those images probably tells you more about yourself than it does about the movie.
Actually, I've heard the things it is preaching many times. Although presented very well and with impressive visuals, the ideas were not new, even then.
And that "tells you more about yourself" stuff is pretty meaningless. It's a cherry-picked sequence of images, and I'm smart enough to tell what the message is. If you agree with the message, then stand behind it and take responsibility for it, don't just say "it means whatever you see in it".
Okay - I don't have to look it up - that person has the entire song up there in MP3. Of course, it's only a 23 second song...
--
Evan (who needs to watch that PDQ Bach video that a friend has)
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
The 24fps source would be for the NTSC DVD release, and the 30fps source for the PAL DVD release.
No, that's not right. As other posters have mentioned, NTSC is (approximately) 60Hz interlaced, while PAL is 50Hz interlaced.
For PAL, generally what they do is speed up the 24fps source to get it up to 25fps, and interlace it so the result is a 50Hz interlaced picture.
For NTSC, you've got a problem not unlike when you buy hot dogs in packs of 12 and hot dog buns in packs of 8. But in this case, they have to get a 60Hz interlaced video stream out of a 24fps source, or 5 interlaced fields for every 2 progressive frames. It's really a rather kludgy technique that introduces a bit of "judder" into the picture---particularly when the camera is panning slowly. But hey, it works, and people have been doing it for years, long before DVD.
A progressive-scan DVD player can reconstruct the original 24fps sequence and send it out at 60Hz progressive. That's an improvement, but even that can't completely get rid of the judder. Some home theater equipment (and PC-based DVD players) can support refresh rates other than 60Hz, so they can potentially get rid of the judder problem altogether by choosing, say, a 72Hz refresh rate.
But back to this movie. Since they have a 30fps version of this scene shot already, they will basically be able to do for NTSC just what they do with PAL normally---except there's no need for the 5% speedup.
Well, that's sort of my point, that it doesn't make you think about "precisely" anything. Those images comprise a visual language that is so information-dense that you can't sum it up effectively in words. Moreover, different people will see those images and come away with completely different takes on them. I'm not just saying that hypothetically or to be artsy-fartsy--my take on the movie is obviously substantially different from yours.
And I absolutely don't agree that the only message in the film is "humanity is a dirty infestation on the face of a lovely planet". There are layers upon layers of meaning there. Sure, those human activities speeded up may seem meaningless to you. To me they look like natural processes--like blood in the circulatory system, or like water droplets in a river. Some of them certainly are ugly, and it's hard to see them any other way...the shot of the huge dump truck, or whatever that thing is, that is enveloped in its own black smoke, comes to mind. But many of the images are not as one-sided as that.
Monkeytreats
You may have heard or read the things that you perceive it to be preaching many times. That's not what I'm talking about. Prior to 1983, I don't think anyone had seen the world from quite that perspective. It may not seem like an important distinction, but it is. When a concept is conveyed via written language or speech, it is not nearly as open to interpretation as when it is conveyed using purely visual means. Moreover, if I sit down to write an essay, but I have no message, it won't make any sense. If I take a photograph of something without intending the picture to convey meaning, it still will convey meaning. Alternately, if I take a photograph of something, with the intention of conveying a particular message, my audience may end up getting a completely different message.
And that "tells you more about yourself" stuff is pretty meaningless. It's a cherry-picked sequence of images, and I'm smart enough to tell what the message is.
I think that comment is very interesting. Apparently you're way smarter than I am. Please tell me what the universally-understood message of Koyaanisqatsi is, in 250,000 words or less. Make sure not to leave anything out. Then you can post it on Slashdot and I'm sure everyone will agree that you got it exactly right.
Monkeytreats
I think that comment is very interesting. Apparently you're way smarter than I am. Please tell me what the universally-understood message of Koyaanisqatsi is, in 250,000 words or less. Make sure not to leave anything out. Then you can post it on Slashdot and I'm sure everyone will agree that you got it exactly right.
So which is it? It uses powerful visuals to convey a message, or it doesn't have a clear message?
Being incoherent doesn't make something deep. But is it awfully convenient, because if you're ever challenged on your message, you can retreat and say "I have no message; it is only what you make of it".
Prior to 1983, I don't think anyone had seen the world from quite that perspective.
Maybe not, I don't remember. Certainly not so visually. But in 1982, you could hear part of that perspective in Subdivisions, by the band Rush. But, hey, they only had 5:33, so they only covered the "modernity alienation" part. And it's just a pop song, not a deep, deep, film. Oh well.
Wait a minute, memory coming back. They had a video, with that kind of urban traffic imagery. Was that made before or after the movie was released, I wonder?
That's what my point has been all along, that there is no one distinct message in the film. It shows you the world from an interesting perspective, but a perspective is different from a message. Whatever meaning you get from the movie comes from your interpretation of the images.
The original poster was apparently quite annoyed by the "patronizing message" of the film. I don't agree that the message is patronizing, because I don't think there's one particular message that the film expresses. Hey, if anyone doesn't agree, all they have to do is tell me what that message is. If they're right, I won't be able to disagree with them.
Being incoherent doesn't make something deep.
No, but I don't think Koyaanisqatsi is incoherent. But for the sake of argument, if Koyaanisqatsi is incoherent...how could it be patronizingly incoherent?
Certainly not so visually. But in 1982, you could hear part of that perspective in Subdivisions, by the band Rush.
Again, my point is that this was a new perspective from which to look at the world. Imagery is by its very nature more open to interpretation than verbal or written language, thus a film with no words carries more potential meanings than a book, or a lyrical pop song.
I'm not saying film is a "deeper" or "better" medium than pop music. I'm just saying this particular kind of film is more open to interpretation, and I think that makes it extremely interesting. Comparing film to pop music is like comparing the proverbial apples and oranges. Not better, just different.
It's not like this sort of thing is unique to Koyaanisqatsi, either. The message of any number of works of art is debatable. Hamlet, for example--the message is what, that if your dad gets killed, it'll make you sad? What's the message of the Mona Lisa? Beethoven's Ninth? All these things require interpretation to derive meaning from them, and no two people are going to interpret a work of art the same way.
You could even make the argument that there's a loose correlation between simplicity of message and crappy art. I'd like to cite "Ice Ice Baby," by the renowned composer Vanilla Ice, in which the message seems to be basically that he's rollin, in his 5.0, with the ragtop down so his hair can blow.
Monkeytreats
Even some of that nastiness is strangely beautiful, though, in my opinion. The one shot of the dump truck that disappears into a cloud of black smoke is the one that really sticks with me. It's ugly, but sort of poetically ugly, if that makes any sense.
Monkeytreats