Film review: Godfrey Reggio, Koyaanisqatsi, 90'

Godfrey Reggio, Koyaanisqatsi, 90'

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Review by ES

Koyaanisqatsi - Translation from Hopi: ‘A crazy life; a life in turmoil; a life out of balance; a life disintegrated; a state of life that calls another way of living.’

Where am I? I am seduced by this question. The camera glides over rock faces with delicacy and grace, as if stroking skin. We flick to and from different mountain ranges, gazing over desolate land from above, empty of human existence. Where are we? Mountains are shadowed by other mountains but there are no humans, there is no trace.

We see shapes in these mountains. They resemble skyscrapers. In this dystopian place, they are their own uninhabited cities. I am watching, anticipating as the music builds. No words are spoken, as words would not be able to describe this scene, or explain its emotion. Language can no longer describe the world we live in.

Smoke is building, blown about, and inhabits the emptiness. Dust particles become crowds with one another, creating shapes in empty spaces, becoming clouds.

Clouds, clouds, clouds. Clouds roll in and out of each other as they form and disappear in their timeless movements. Looking so alien, yet so familiar. So full and solid, yet so fluid. Like floods, like waves, like industrial smoke: The broken dam, or the waterfall.

Expanses of clouds are like expanses of water. Their natural patterns are alike. Clouds circle in waves, over one another. Over and through. They are obstructed by objects, mountains, just as water passing through lakes is obstructed by rock. Just as water passes over itself.

Are we flying through the air, as we traverse these landscapes? Are we a bird? Or are we a fighter pilot?

Mountains are under destruction. Destroyed by large, black-smoke producing machines. They crumble, they explode, and dust flies around. Humans are disrupting.

There is digging, churning, pumping, extracting, compressing, burning, and exploding. Sourcing in the desolate landscapes. All the time new patterns are produced. New waves and new clouds.

Now mountains are towns. Cityscapes of skyscrapers. We watch clouds pass through their windows. We follow them through this new landscape.

We watch the plane make its way to the ground, through clouds. It lands on the hot fuzzy earth, making a reflection with itself, as if on water. Our man-made bird; beautiful but menacing.

Motorway lines make waves as roads loop over one another; interconnecting systems connecting human to human, and city to city.

Lines of people waiting, queueing, standing. Moving.

Lines of cars in traffic, making waves over bumps in the road.

Lines of cars waiting, making patterns as they stand still.

We are at war, and the mechanical warfare stands waiting. Tanks and fighter jets are waiting.

Now we are the fighter pilot, following the line of flight of this container. We watch as the mountains envelope us, and the missile sinks slowly to the ground.

We scan the city from below. We glide through it on foot amongst the rubble. Amongst the trash. We see in minute detail places left behind. Abandoned. They have exploded. Where has everyone gone? And now they are being destroyed. Smashed, knocked down, gone. They crash to the earth and become dust, integrating with the natural earth. Now the air is crowded once more.

Everything moves, endlessly. Time is passing, and clouds are moving us through the city. We are a swarm. A mass of people. An ant hive watched from above as we traverse our landscape. We are rustling pixels, following the ones before us.

Our movements are choreographed dances of waiting and moving at crossways. These movements are ingrained in our muscle memory. Muscles remember the path from one subway to another, from one escalator to the next.

We encounter obstacles: Elevators becoming filtering systems. Ticketing gates designating the flow and speed of our movement. One, one, one. One after another. We are distributed.

And we continue. To walk with a direction, and flow, in the mass.

You are no one. You are of many. Invisible?

No. An individual. Three faces shine through the crowd, and we see their features. Who are you?

The lights of the skyscrapers flicker on and off in a timelapse. The lights of cars on the motorway become strings of colour. We are scanning the city from above in fast-speed.

We must increase our speed of production, and consumerism. Up, up, and ever up. The conveyor belt of production. The conveyor belt of our movement.

But where am I? I keep wondering. Am I the subject of this film as its viewer?

It is about my experience.

I am seeing what is surface level, as I traverse our streets here. But what do I see from above? Perhaps it is our history, going unnoticed in the everyday. Our transition from nature, into technological milieu, into mass technology as ‘natural life’; as merely lived, rather than truly experienced, in the now.

Is this what we marvel at from above, in Koyaanisqatsi?