Search - Koyaanisqatsi - Life Out of Balance on DVD

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Graham C. White | Longmont, CO United States | 09/30/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Everyone obviously has taste and opinion, but simply put, this is my favorite movie of all time (altho, as at least one other reviewer mentioned, not as powerful as the big screen). There is no film like it, except perhaps the Imax film Chronos (which is basically the eye candy with no substance) and possibly the sequel. But those are only similarities in style of filmmaking, not in quality.



But I will say, while it's my favorite movie, I can only stand to watch it about every 5 years, because for about 3-4 days after watching Koyaanisqatsi, I can barely deal with this society. It just makes me want to cry to drive on city streets.



So if you're already trying to come to grips with reality, this movie probably would be counter-productive. But for everybody who thinks everything about modern western civilization truly is "progress", I couldn't recommend this film enough.



What it will be for those people, is a priceless perspective adjustment. It won't make you permanently pessimistic or anything, it will just give you a new perspective."

Life, and a world really out of balance

Daniel J. Hamlow | Narita, Japan | 03/09/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The first of Godfrey Reggio's finally finished trilogy, Koyaanisqatsi, is a visually-stunning non-narrative film depicting a life and world out of balance. Koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi word meaning one of five things: "crazy life, life in turmoil, life disintegrating, life out of balance, and a state of life that calls for another way of living." After watching this film, one will definitely see all five definitions painfully applicable.Basically, the first fifteen to twenty minutes of the film has some wonderful shots of the desert, waterfalls, geologic formations, clouds billowing so close it's as if one's inside them, and aerial photography that makes one appreciate the landscape.The rest of the movie then shows the human side. Caterpillar tractors lay out pipes, dotting the landscape with a network of electric towers, resembling wire framework travesties of men, power plants billowing steam and smoke smack in the middle of the desert, atomic tests in the desert, nuclear plants... abominations invading the environment. Rivers have been stopped by dams. And the military testing in the desert does nothing more than pollute the ground and air with explosions.Switch over to the big city and the 12 lane highways, with its network of overpasses, byways, merging lanes, cars moving bumper to bumper, passing each other. Then we see the decrepit slums, abandoned projects, which are then blown up, slowly sinking to the ground in clouds of dust.The time-lapse photography of people milling in line for subway tickets, eating, bowling, playing video games, etc. shows the city as the organism, streets, entrances and exits as blood vessels, humans as the blood cells. The night scenes of traffic, with white and red dashes zipping is very telling, as is the cycle of traffic going, stopping, going, stopping at each signal light. Later on, the speed of the film goes quicker, to demonstrate the quickening rate and insanity of human consumption, waste, and stress. Is this really worth living for, I ask you?There are some images that are analogous. An aerial view of the concrete jungle, at what we've created, is replaced by an infrared satellite photo, then a closeup of a computer chip, showing the inputs going into multiplexers and demultiplexers, coming out as outputs. It shows how mechanized we have become compared to the more serene, less chaotic ways of nature, going in one way, going out through another. Another is a shot of sausages being cranked out, followed by people moving up escalators. Notice the similarity?The most telling shots of the thousands of people in New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco is that they don't look very happy at all, but for them, it's what they know, what they are, part of this mechanized, corporate world.The translation of Hopi prophecies sung in the movie follow the conclusion, and they are sobering and chilling: "If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster." "Near the Day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth through the sky." "A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans."Philip Glass's score, which alternates from frenetic synthesizers during the time-lapse footage and elegiac sobriety in the slo-mo shots, adds to this one-of-a-kind movie. However, this is best seen on the big screen for maximum impact."