KOYAANISQATSI review: words are insufficient

I had no idea what was about to go down. We were killing time, browsing a friend’s sibling’s DVD collection, and at one friend’s insistence, we put on Koyaanisqatsi (none of us knew what the hell it was, let alone how to pronounce the damn thing), in order to hear a song that was apparently featured in Watchmen, or something. We were going to listen to the song, and then stop the film and put something else on (Tim Burton’s Big Fish was on the menu — eurgh).

At first my lack of comprehension intensified and led to mild irritation. Oh no, I thought, it’s one of those stupid artsy movies with preposterous opening sequences full of meaning and all that other artsy, avant-garde bullshit. Miraculously the disc stayed in the player beyond the inital confusion, and the film played in its entirety. After the first ten or so minutes we were all absorbed by the film, and it became the centrepoint of our conversation for the next hour and a half. It wasn’t just the opening that was surreal and unique — the whole damn thing turned out to be the same way. Awesome.

Koyaanisqatsi is an hour-and-a-half of footage with purpose-composed “minimalist” music overlaid. I don’t know why they call it minimalist, because it was pretty busy, but I guess the hypnotic nature contributes to the definition. Or something. So anyway, it’s hard to define what the film’s about. There’s a few hints in the translation of the film’s title, but that kind of ruins the fun of building your own reaction to it. It’s just footage of various things — explosions, mountains, countryside, buildings, cities, human activity, machinery, factories, more explosions, and so on — that’s presented in an utterly unique, compelling, and somehow meaningful way.

I almost hate myself for that last sentence, but it’s true. The film manages to build meaning out of its disparate elements. Some of the footage is disconcertingly mind-blowing (New York traffic in ultra-fast time-lapse, for instance) while some of it is supremely soothing and relaxing (the realisation, as humans scurry about like ants in super-time-lapse, that nothing you do has any real effect on the cosmos is somehow divinely reassuring). The music draws you in superbly, gluing your eyes to the screen and giving your brain room to move and think and comprehend and assemble things into meaningful patterns. There is enough variety of footage, pacing, and music that you are never overwhelmed or bored by what goes on, it’s all perfectly constructed in such a way that it just all works.

I don’t know why, but I absolutely loved this movie. Seeing the world in such holistic detail is a unique experience, and I found myself thinking that Koyaanisqatsi is probably more informative and interesting than a dozen random documentaries selected from the Discovery Channel combined. There are no words, no narration, no plot, narrative or characters, but you feel more connected to it because of (not in spite of) its blankness, almost like you’re being invited in to project your own internal thoughts and feelings onto the blank canvas of the film. The lack of traditional coherence and reliance on plot devices is a welcome change, a breath of fresh air, and the way Koyaanisqatsi seemingly falls fully-formed from the sky into your TV is miraculous, worthy of the question “Where the hell did that come from?”

The triumvirate of director, cinematographer and composer (Godfrey Reggie, Ron Fricke and Phillip Glass, respectively) works like some kind of holy trinity to dictate the ebb and flow of the film, and to deliver completely undiluted the high concept promised at the outset. You don’t know where one’s input ends and another’s begins, the convoluted threads of vision, sound and meaning intertwined to a place beyond distinction and definition. The music alone would be hypnotic and transcendant, but coupled with the equally powerful images it takes on a whole other meaning. It’s like simultaneously hearing and seeing music. It’s strange, unique, and — I’m running out of superlatives here. The best thing I can compare it to is Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, except Koyaanisqatsi is more pure because it doesn’t dally in distractions like character and plot, and comes off as less boring and clinical than Kubrick’s masterpiece.

The movie remains completely impersonal until right towards the end, where, juxtaposed against the bustling fast-forwarded footage of cars and pedestrians in overpopulated metropolises, we get a pair of slow-motion shots of pure human emotion: a patient’s hand being held in a hospital, and a homeless man gazing forlornly at the miniscule collection of coins in the palm of his hand. This comes at just the right time, and in just the right quantities, to ignite the dormant emotions carefully set up by the previous hour’s worth of footage, and helps push the film into the surreal realm of pure emotion. The theme of hands is important becase as the film’s subtitle suggests, the future and condition of the world, civilisation as well as the physical planet, are in our hands. How we treat our lowliest members — the sick and invalid — is an important idea.

If humanity as a civilisation were judged by the way we treat our ill relatives, the homeless people on the street, our helpless children, the uneducated poor, and all the other rock-bottom, desperate people of our society, we would almost certainly be found wanting. But it’s in our nature to be callous and indifferent to all those not directly related to us or incapable of returning our favours. It makes sense from a cold, biological and psychological standpoint, but as we stumble out of the tribal infancy of our species, isn’t it about time that we stepped up to the plate and consciously defied the shackles of hardwired instinct? One of the many factors that differentiate us from the other animals is our ability to reason. We’ve built science, technology and medicine with this wonderful tool of logic, isn’t it about time we turned it on that other pillar of civilisation — society? We’re stuck in the proverbial woods of despair and confusion until we do.

I can understand why the vast majority of people, weaned on Disney and Star Wars, will rebel and rail with all their will against a movie like this. It’s not a traditional movie, and in an age where Transformers 2 sells like gangbusters, it’s clear that unique thought, progressive qualities, intelligence and humanism are not what the people want any more. But it’s definitely what I want, and I loved it.

Score: 90 out of 100