I started watching Godfrey Reggio's film Koyaanisqatsi on hulu.com but I had to stop because the irony of the situation got to be too much. The film is subtitled, "Life out of Balance" and is a series of long takes of nature juxtaposed contrasting long takes of modernity (space shuttles, the commotion of the city, etc.). The film is augmented by minimalist music composed by Phillip Glass (if you haven't heard it, check out Einstein on the Beach) and I think the experience of watching it is supposed to be a sort of guided meditation. I imagine seeing it on the big screen would be an incredible film going experience.
This isn't by any means easy viewing, after a short while I was getting accustomed to the excruciatingly long curve of continuity that the film employs when in a very postmodern moment, 11 minutes and some odd seconds in, the film was interrupted to show a 30 second commercial for Vonage. This was when I decided to wait and borrow it from the library. I don't mind watching TV on hulu, or most movies for that matter. My viewing of film is probably most characterized by interruption (time to go to class, the kids need their dad to come back to earth, or I should be doing something else but this movie is awesome!). However, it's difficult at best to try and experience a film like Koyaanisqatsi the way it was intended while watching it on laptop via a web site that stops the film every so often to show a commercial.
This incident probably just foregrounds the irony of watching Koyaanisqatsi at all. A film whose thesis is that modernity creates a way of living that is unnatural and out of balance can never really deliver the message it wants to via DVD or even VHS for that matter. The material that DVD's and tapes are made of already subvert the message of the film, the process deconstructs itself. Think also of Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". Though Koyaanisqatsi would probably be best viewed in a theater to escape any possibility of interruption, the cinema experience, like the home video medium, will always prevent the film from truly saying what it wants to say. I could go on about images, phantasms, celluloid and projection but I think you get the point. Still, if you haven't seen it, Reggio's film is worth checking out.
2 comments:
I saw it in my environment and humanities class. We concluded that there isn't necessarily a straight forward message in this film. For example, there are helicopter shots of some sort of factory and its smokestacks. At first you want to think that the message is that these symbols of industry are polluting our air and throwing our nature out of balance (if you are watching the movie with an 'earth is good' bias this is more probable), but as the shot lingers on the screen and the helicopter comes around you realize that there is something beautiful about this man-made structure (and you realize that the image itself is man-made) and the irony of the film becomes quite heavy upon you as the spectator (you think: 'look how beautiful and untouched the Grand Canyon is except for the camera and cameraman and perhaps the camera crew behind the camera') and you begin to think that what is out of balance may be you as the spectator having a once, twice-removed (time and space) experience with nature.
In any case, I have this film on my Amazon wish list (along with its quels) because of this heavy irony (heavy because it won't go away) and because of the music.
1. I love me some Philip Glass soundtrack.
2. I liked Koyaanisqatsi but felt that it was just slightly overdone, and it didn't really stick with me as does Baraka, a film in a similar vein which I absolutely love. You should see it, too, if you haven't already.
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