“Koyaanisqatsi”, A Film That Cannot Be Read Like A Novel. P.1
Life unquestioned is a life lived in a religious state.
Godfrey Reggio
Some artists create to express, some to accomplish, some to revolutionize, some to make a point, and some artists create to think.
Due to the extremely hard nature of this film, I will be discussing it in four different articles. I am willing to publish the thesis freely here on medium. I spent most of my college years working on the nature of non-narrative films, including the act of interpreting those films, and by interpreting, I do not mean to know what the maker wanted to show but to go beyond that, to explore the unconscious human nature that leads to such creations, to decode them Cinematically, to read them, in Cinema, to explore cinema as an art form, different from any other art form. I am eager to share this conceptual study here on medium, maybe one day someone will find it, will continue with it, maybe a passerby, can share with me the time, to think about life, not from underneath, but from above. I will try to make this series as simple, soft, and friendly as possible. I will also be explaining all used terminologies in the articles so that any person, from any scientific background, can read this. So if you’re interested in hearing out what, a “Film studies student” thinks about films, art, and how they are a reflection of reality, then be my guest.
Koyaanisqatsi is an experimental-documentary film written and directed by American filmmaker “Godfrey Reggio” in 1983, Cinematographed by “Ron Frick”, and its musical score is made by composer “Phillip Glass”. The word “Koyaanisqatsi [kojɑːnisˈkɑtsi], is a Hopìikwa Lavàytutuvenian word that is roughly defined as “Life Out Of Balance”. The film is one of three films, a trilogy named “Qatsi trilogy” made over the course of 20 years, including the film (Powaqqatsi) that was made in 1988, the word “Powaqqatsi” [pojɑːˈkɑtsi]is derived from Hopi neologism and edited by Reggio to mean “A Parasitic way of Life”, or “life in transition”, the last film of the trilogy is “Naqoyqatsi” made in 2002 and was edited by “Jon Kane”, the word “Naqoyqatsi” [/nɑːkɔɪˈkɑːtsi/], is also derived from Hopi and means roughly “ Life as War”.
A movie that cannot be described using words.
We need to note here that the only correct term to say about the film “Koyaanisqatsi” is that, it is a non-narrative film. That does not mean it is not scripted but simply means its script is a non-narrative one, it’s not written to be told as a story, but to be seen, and sensed in a film theater.
I don’t like the old fashion way of describing a plot of a film, then talking about it, it kills the rhythm for researching the film, it describes the film, only as a story, a narrated one, so if you are here to see what does the film talk about, it’s not the right place for you, nor any written article is. It is a film to be watched while sitting in the dark, doing nothing, but watching, the boredom you will feel, is a part of the experience, the dissatisfaction, the anxiety, all of this, is part of the film’s experience, it’s like what Lars Von trier describes as “A movie that feels like a stone in your shoe”. This is not a review as this film does not need one, it’s a thought experiment, a call for watching the film, an offer to free our minds for 1h and a half, this article is a philosophical one, talking about what lies inside this film, what kind of poetry is it, what truth does it hold.
As mentioned before, this film cannot be described using the traditional written methods, it is like describing “Starry Night” made by Vincent Van Gogh to a blind person, as sad as it is, that they won’t be able to feel the sensation of “starry night”, it is sadder that we cannot actually make them feel it. So, how am I going to discuss the film? Using Cinema, we will talk about the film in four different sections. “The structure of the script”, “The components of the frame, and their compositional structure”, “The motion of time and the montage”, “The music, and its effect on the rhythm”.
The script: An ongoing conflict of the whole, and the sum of its parts.
One of the main reasons cinema actually exists as an independent art form, not an extension to already existing ones, is its ability to observe conflicts, there is no story without a conflict, psychologist Paul Bloom points out that “Superman is nothing without kryptonite” meaning that, heroism need conflicts to exist. We constructed art to show struggle, conflicts, to discuss those conflicts and think of them, to ask questions not to answer them, to observe. And cinema is not different, usually, a typical classical story will have a morally conflicted hero that follows a path, the heroes meet struggles on their path, internal, and external ones, the film ends by resolving the internal moral conflicts which then open the door for resolving the outer conflicts, negatively, or positively. We can bravely say that a story, must have a hero, a hero “Is something that pushes the story forward, in spacetime, it gives the story the right to move causally.”
Koyaanisqatsi takes a different approach here, the hero of the story here is life itself, it’s the march of time that only we can sense it, or in a more scientific term, express it. If you look at photos from the film, you will see, buildings, mountains, rivers, lights, stores, action, motion, humans as crowds, or as individuals. It is like you are a ghost that decided to visit earth, the camera is moving independently from what is going on, in front of it, it is wrong to say that Koyaanisqatsi has no heroes, instead, a better term to use is that the hero of the film is “The Background”. Rather than exploring a hero in a context, the film explores the context itself without the hero. Bare with me here, have you ever really looked at your window?, At your Chair? the light that bounces over a piece of furniture?. For the sake of understanding the subject, try this, open your window, and watch something being moved by the motion of air around it, take 20 seconds, and think of nothing but this motion, it is odd!! It is not necessarily beautiful, but weird, your cognitive system takes for granted the idea of motion, a thing moves in time, and is a thing on its own, not anything else, a tree is only a tree, it’s not the “view” you have, it’s just a tree independent from the view, you are the one who constructs the view, you organize the subjects that appear relatively far to you, and make them a whole.
This is The “gestalt effect”, which is the ability of the brain to generate whole forms from groupings of lines, shapes, curves, and points, from isolated, but relatively near to each other, subjects. It is used widely in Films, and it is part of why films exist in the first place, Koyaanisqatsi’s hero is the Gestalt effect. The conflict of the film, is the relationship between those objects that make the whole, showing organically, how the whole is not just the sum of its parts, but more than that, the films show humans as part of a path, unrelated to each other, and moving in different directions, having different lives, and timelines, but simply as a part of the structure that makes them who they are, it’s how an alien would perceive us, as cows hovering in a green field, the film goes beyond that, to express a kind of anger towards this motion, is this life? Is life that systematic? No matter how much we try to individualize ourselves, we always are a part of a whole. But a narcissistic one, the film discusses a scary narrative, you feel like humans are parasites on earth, how they move, colonize, and consume, yet if you view them closely they are individuals, it’s like naming a whole colony of ants, why would you do that, if you can’t tell them apart? Well, you can’t, but they can. Koyaanisqatsi then, suggests a parasitic idea about life, that life needs narcissism, a living organism needs to think that it’s unique, different, important, and worthy of living, simply for it to continue living, it’s not a mental state, it’s a biological one, you do not just run for information, you attract information, just like it attracts you. the film also points out the merge between humans and technology, how we humans stopped looking at technology as a tool, but also view it as an independent creature of some kind, we are so dependent on technology, that we have already become “Cyborgs”, a phone is an extension of your hand, a laptop is an extension of your memory, and processing unit, we and technology, became one, but from above, we seem so different, you often can, in the time being, tell the difference between a machine, and a human, just like how would you tell the difference between food and humans. But try to separate the two mentally, socially, or even biologically, you simply cannot do so! Koyaanisqatsi is sad, happy, weird, and miserable, but most importantly, honest, It was always thought, that art can never be subjective, it’s always objective, yet our film does not appear to be objective, it is of course a work of art made by a human eventually, and that makes the film as an industrial component, an objective one. But not as an artistic expression, the film is not biased, sometimes, you can feel the camera resisting your desire for it to move to the left or the right, it is exactly as if the camera grew conscious, and now hovering over earth independently, observing the motion it craves, Eventually, the film evolves into a new made up universe, it’s like decoding your reality, it’s you, from the outside, it’s how things, actually look like, the war between the steady and the moving, that the film suggest to follow, focus more on their balance, mainly, on how unbalanced they are, but each depending on the other, how light depends on the observer, and vice versa, how life depends on death, and vice versa.
Koyaanisqatsi is a work of art, yes, but it’s also, an observation, a true one, just like how we measure Radiation, Reggio is measuring life, It is a yool among many other tools that can help us, understand ourselves more, and most importantly, it’s a language, that we need to speak in order to observe what we couldn’t before.
Films, as much as they differ, hold a similarity, they have more freedom in discussing abstract ideas, more than simply written narratives do, sometimes they can explore science better than books do. Films like “Ashes and Snow” written and directed by Gregory Colbert in 2005, or the work of “Ron Frick”, like “Samsara” in 2011, or the work of the revolutionary Alexander Sokurov in films like “Russian Ark” in 2002 explore the nature of “места” or places in Russian. Or the films that shaped a new form of expression, like for example the work of “Andre Tarkovsky” in “Nostalgia” 1983, and “The Mirror” 1975, or “Persona” directed by “Ingmar Bergman”, the act of killing the medium in French Neo cinema, the act of destructing art as a form of art, In films like “Breathless” by Jean Luc Godard in 1960, or the work of Chantal Akerman in “Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels” in 1975, or the idea of reshaping the motion of a story in time and space, to directly tell it in million different way, like the work of Alain Resnais in “Last Year at Marienbad” in 1961, and many more! I will try to stay honest to myself in exploring how cinema is not just an art form, but a language, that, like “Mathematics”, allows us to explore worlds, that are not simply available, without it.
References:
- “What is cinema?”, Book by André Bazin.
- “Ten Skies", Book by Erika Balsom, 2004.
- “Understanding Film Theory", Book by Ruth Doughty.
- “Relocating American Film History" research paper by Robert Allen.
- https://youtu.be/PK03KKcdzl0 “An interview with Godfrey Reggio, and Phillip glass"
- https://youtu.be/3gsCTkd3A5M “An interview with Godfrey Reggio”
- “The Poetics of Poetry Film: Film Poetry, Videopoetry, Lyric Voice, Reflection" A book by Sarah Tremlett 2020.
- “Theorizing Documentary" A book by Michael Renov 1993.
