“Koyaanisqatsi”, A film that cannot be read like a novel. P.2
I have gone through the details of this film, in the first article, therefore we are not going to discuss its information, like the publishing year, the director, the script and etc…
I have also discussed the meaning that was hidden, under the experimental, and documentary structure of the script. We have found out interesting aspects that Reggio managed to grasp in his film. Now we are going to dive deeply and dangerously into the Compositional Structure of the frames of Koyaanisqatsi, in hope that we can actually capture some of the unconscious thoughts of Reggio, the effect of civilization on us, and how we perceive it.
We are here today to discuss three frames from the film, as an example of how to watch the film, it’s a tutorial on how to sit and observe Koyaanisqatsi, be aware that this is the reason for the slow motion of the camera, Reggio does not want the viewer to be confused, instead to take the time to observe each frame and to melt into its meaning. After analyzing those frames, you will for a certain degree, be able to read Koyaanisqatsi, in a different way, or as I hope so, be able to give it your own reasons, and apply your own understanding.
The components of the frame
Due to the academic nature of this article, I will try my best, to keep it short, to the point, and simple. Now we need to talk about what a frame is, how do Film Theorists read a frame, and for that we need to know two main rules to be on the same page of what reading a cinematic frame looks like.
Note: “Those rules are applicable only to this film and are not by any means, Film theory rules, as there are no strict rules for it.”
- A frame cannot be read as a photo, it needs to be within the context.
- A frame is not the motion of the camera, it is the components within it and the relationship between them.
The choosing process is random, and will not include a scene by scene study, as it will take more than 10 parts to finish, instead, we will visit some of the frames, and after analyzing them, you will be able to understand the concept of analysis that we are using here.
Let’s take this frame as an example, without talking about lights, because this is going to be mentioned heavily in the montage section in Prt.3, only the objects and the motion of the objects in the frame.
I have applied the rule of thirds on this frame, I have also drawn depth lines, to differentiate two kinds of motion here, the in-depth motion referred to by the White Lines, and the out of depth motion referred to by the Yellow lines, we can see that The Blue Area is the place where motion is exaggerated, and The Green Area is the place where the motion is understated. Beware of the context here, the camera is steady filming the different motions of the cars on the bridge, where the green and blue areas are flipped continuously, “Watch the Film to get a better understanding”. Now watch closely the area of tension, it remains the area of tension the whole scene, and the initial point of reading the frame remains somewhat calmer, we can see that the lines meet at the area of tension, and are separated afterward. In this frame what we see here is an isolation technique. The idea is that we take a fraction of a huge scene, and symbolize the scene with a notion. the lines are obviously continuing and are not stopping at the tension, there is no magical stop sign that all of the cars stop at. And because of the Gestalt effect, we see the lines in the tension area as a single group, it is like saying “And afterward, all the cars crashed”, yet we can see them moving like they are disappearing and reappearing all over again, this reminds us of something! It is a cycle, the cars are not important, no single car is important, what is important is the merge of the cars, how they represent the veins of the city, it is a relationship between blood and the heart. The pulse of this action in referring to a centralized area, because we can imagine that the same thing is happening on the other side of the frame, yet the camera does not show us that. This clearly shows two main aspects, How small our effects are as individuals, yet when combined how they are presented to an outsider, which massively serves the idea behind the film as we discussed in the former article. And second, how important the relationship between motion and time is. Now watch carefully, the shutter is very slow, it is capturing not light itself, but its effect, as if there was a reason for this motion, as it is formed by a cause of some kind, it captures how robotic our motion is, how the results are always predictable, nothing weird will happen here, cars will continue moving wether we filmed them or not. Another great aspect of this frame, and the whole scene, to be honest, is the imbalance between the blue parts of the frame and the green parts, how close they look to us, yet if you put yourself in those areas, the green one will appear to you scarier, calmer, and darker especially on the down-left yellow dot “A”, yet the blue area is full of life, noise, and lights, especially on the up-right yellow dot “B”. The contrast between A and B shows a lack of steadiness, a surreal strict division, that meant to tell us how we judge a place by how “Lively” it is, just like our bodies, we prefer places that have life, our bodies does that two, this contrast also shows us how life is explained by the chaos of motion, at the same time, how motion is like a magnet, it always attracts motion. This scene is an affirmative way to say “Koyaanisqatsi” visually.
ِAnother interesting Scene from the film is “The Products Scene”, where the camera moves above the endless shelves, of a random mall.
We have previously mentioned briefly the idea of who, or in this context, what is the hero of this film? and said it was “The Background”. Here, we can view an extraordinary example of this idea.
We can see very obviously that the rule of thirds is not quite working here! Now, why is that? well, simply there is no foreground object to put in relation to the background. The background continues to grow and move. The hero here is the background and the motion of the viewer’s eyes in relation to the background. See, here, you are actually in the scene, you are participating in it, you are not an objective viewer, in some sense, you are a reason for this motion. Reggio’s accusation of the viewer grew bigger and became more noticeable, this pattern of different items, first attacks the foundations of “Consumerism”, and then goes further to give the viewers the opportunity to judge their own behaviors and what they manifested into. This repetitive pattern is everywhere, but we just have never seen it from this angle. What is even more strange here, is that Reggio is not getting himself out of the equation, he is clearly a part of this kind of destruction. Another very interesting thing to look at is The United Color. We all can see a reddish yellow color, that is the “Sundance” color exactly #D2A54A, it mostly contains Red, and yellow. Why is that extraordinary? First of all, that cannot be scripted in no way, it would have taken massive effort to look for it mall by mall, especially considering that the color of the shelves is also “Sundance” and not white as they normally are. The idea here is that Reggio chose this color, unconsciously, because it represents nature. This is our nature, and Reggio’s nature too, the sundance color is stating that we are creating our own industrial environment. This pattern reveals to us how, we humans, can never go outside of our biology, our link to nature. the shelves are like trees that grow food, they are ordered up, and sidewards, just like a field of wheat. It is like we are visiting a new “Gatherer and hunter” era, where we have returned to our biological greedy nature. The blue lines represent The Documentation Droning camera motion, which is a technical movement used a lot when filming natural scenes by a drone.
The final frame we are going to talk about is “The Metro Station” frame, and it is one of the scariest parts of the film, Why scary? Let’s explore it…
First, take into account that the people in this scene are moving in a timelapse motion, meaning very fast and in the same direction. At first glance, this seems normal, we are used to this motion, some of us live through it every day. But as we have already learned that's not how to read a Koyaanisqatsi frame! Let us look closer and more technical.
The frame here is very intense, somehow, it’s revealing the true color of humans, as they are perceived by a human watching them from above, it is not saying “Bad Things” about human evolution, and that’s why this film is so beautiful, it is not “Answering the question”, but rather“Asking them”. Now usually we build a building by throwing a foundation of steel and going up from that foundation. and at first, we see that the message is that humans are a foundation to evolution, but if you look closely, at the foundation we can see that us being a foundation is wrong, simply because we are not supporting “The Metro Station Building”, it is the other way around. the building is supporting us, those steel columns are placed right at the “Vertical Power Lines” of the rule of thirds. which states that they are the basis of this architecture, while humans are distributed endlessly towards a singular point, just like a black hole. If this is hard to imagine let me help you out here.
Scary right? Yes, it is scary, and fascinating at the same time, we built the foundation for ourselves. What Reggio is observing here, is that human’s relationship with their surroundings is an artificial one. The nature around us is not meant to hold that kind of expansion, so we are forced to strengthen its basis so it could withstand our motion. One other interesting aspect that we have already discussed in part 1, in the absence of individuality in this film, as the film goes on, we can see some individuals, but we never actually meet them out of the context of “Their Jobs”, we observe them only as machines, for example, the pilot frame, where we clearly can see the pilot as a machine, with his face empty of any emotional character.
You can see this clearly when analyzing this scene, where the pilot’s head is centered in the middle of the Jet’s fan that appears to be black, the contrast is very big at the center and appears to fade more and more as we go further away. The pilot’s head is falling down the fan, down the darkness, it is like the fan is sucking him, while his uniform and the objects behind him, seem to have the same characteristic since they are all blended into one background. The foreground here is NOT the Pilot, it is “The Pilot with the huge hole behind him”.
I think now is the time, to rewatch the film, to let those negative feelings build up, it is ok to be sad, Reggio says, it is part of our evolution. This is an ethical dilemma that humans are not ready to face. What we must certainly do right now, is to ask! To think! To observe, being an observer is as important as being observed, maybe even more important. What is so important about Koyaanisqatsi is that although the film is filmed from the perspective of a god-like figure, it is not! It is filmed from a human perspective. It is the film “Friedrich Nietzsche” could have made if he was a filmmaker. It is a film about truth, and motion, maybe our society is normal, maybe that’s how life evolves, maybe this kind of narcissism is a biological necessity for a living organism to thrive, we don’t know. What we do know, is that it captures something we have not thought about before. It is that sometimes, we need to step aside from our robotic movement and just observe as an outsider.
References:
- “Film as a Subversive Art” book by Amos Vogel, published in 1974.
- “Expanded Cinema” book by Gene Youngblood, published in 1970.
- “Fluid Screens, Expanded Cinema” book by Janine Marchessault, published in 2007.
- “Post-What? Post-When? Thinking Moving Images Beyond the Post-medium Condition” research paper by Vinzenz Hediger, Cinéma & Cie International Film Studies Journal Vol. XVI, №26/27, Spring 2017.
- “Disgust Special Issue of Film-Philosophy” research paper by Tina Kendall.
- “Using Film Images to Understand Our Cities” research paper by Taher Abdel-Ghani.
