Koyannisquatsi

Koyannisquatsi (or “Life out of Balance”) is a experimental film from the 1980’s that forces the viewer to find meaning from the music and images that the film has, because there is no characters, story, plot, or dialogue. Personally I dislike these kind of films because I think films should tell stories or at the very least entertain the viewer, but that is not what this post is about.

This post is about the film itself. The film displays characteristics of both neo-realism and spectacle/attraction. Before I talk about how the film displays these characteristics, I will try to define what neo-realism and spectacle attraction are. Neo-realism argued by French film theorist, Andre Bazin, is characterized by being generally authentic. While the characteristic of spectacle/attraction in film is that the film manipulates reality and becomes a spectacle for the viewer, that they wouldn’t really see in their everyday lives. So now that I have defined these terms I will look at how these characteristics are shown in this film.

In Koyannisquatsi, most of the time the film uses characteristics of neo-realism. The film mostly never really uses any shots that capture anything you wouldn’t really see in reality. The film uses shots of nature and the city streets and other places that have a real feel to them. The only times that the film uses characteristics of spectacle/attraction, is when the film either speeds up or slows down the speed of the frames to some how disconnect the viewer from reality. Other times would be towards the end when the film shows a city from a birds eye view and then compares it to a bunch of lines of color that look similar to something you would see in a computer. I think that the film is mostly a form of abstract art that uses real life places and uses music and jumpshots to juxtapose to give it an abstract meaning. If you like films like these then Koyannisqatsi, is the film for you.