Naqoyqatsi

Having seen Koyanisqatsi and Baraka I was very much looking forward to viewing this movie to see how Godfrey Reggio's view of the world has changed and what nuggets of visual wisdom he would impart to me this time around. Needless to say (if you read the summary) I was quite disappointed in the way Mr. Reggio presented his latest film.

If one is seeing this film then one is more than likely already familiar with, and highly sensitive to, the problems that are facing the Earth today. Naqoyqatsi seems to delight in pummeling the viewer with shot after out of focused, highly contrasted, digitally altered shot of the continued plagues of the world.

Yes Mr. Reggio, we know that war is bad, that ideological conformity is limiting, that destruction of the environment threatens our future. The task now at hand is not to document the continuation of these negative historical trends but to show those of us interested how we can begin to live our lives differently to alter the course of history.

After walking out of the movie I felt I had just left an extended 90 minute MTV Yo Yo Ma music video. And not a good MTV video but one of those I-can't-concentrate-for-more-than-2-seconds music videos. Disjointed, depressing, confusing and incoherent are the words I would use to best describe this movie. Skip it.

I read the other review here before seeing the movie and desperately hoped it was wrong - it wasn't. Koyaanisqatsi was, and still is, a great movie -- full of sweeping images and magnificent scope, the movie certainly had an eloquent statement to make. I was hoping for something similar in the third installment.

This was an exercise in tedium. It seemed as though the filmmakers raided the Time-Life library of iconic 20th century images and fed them through a special effects filter. It's as if they felt that what worked in Koyaanisqatsi, would work here -- extreme closeup, slow-motion etc. But the images here had nothing to say.

There was no emotion. Just wall-to-wall shots of everything from dollar signs, 0's and 1's, faces, bodies, computer chips, JFK, Martin Luther King, Bin Laden, buildings ripped by tornados... you get the picture. To make matters worse, everything was put through amateurish f/x-- mosaic, grain, vortex, inverted.

While it may have been a technical marvel, the end result felt empty and labored. Footage near the end consisted of juxtaposing images of real global street violence with video game violence -- but so what? Nothing new was said here. A real shame to end this way...

'Between innocence and politics' would be a Donnie Darkesque mistake to describe the experience of this movie. There's more than one dimension in the world of Reggio and Glass. Especially Jon Kane adds a dimension in my opinion. At times I was a bit disappointed that the creators couldn't resist the temptation of getting rather political and explicit. That wasn't necessary to entertain the audience more. Some may put it like certain sequences are on the verge of being political, but the engagement annoyed me. The Beastie Boys video 'Something's got to give' did it better.

Animation/CGI has been completely aesthetically accepted as means of returning to the level of part one with bits of Tron, bytes of the Matrix, snippets of 2001 and views of Avalon (Oshii, 2001). Together with Glass's magnificent tunes and 'skywalker sound' Naqoyqatsi almost reaches the massive level of Koyaanisqatsi.

Reggio and Kane return to computer-mainboards, cultivation of nature, escalation of conflicts, but this powerful and almost scientific exploration of all kinds of human conflicts still has little intellectual value. Not even if it featured a thousand computer generated symbols, Leonardo Da Vincis, Madame Tussauds, American presidents, Hieronymus Boschs, terrorists or babies. The explicit and excessive use of facial icons and expressions diminishes the universal value as well. I was charmed by the portrayal of internal fights that sportsmen and -women experience (but why did they forget rowing sequences?). It still is way better than the picturesque Powaqqatsi, not only because this has less stock shots, apart from some military parades and nuclear mushrooms. I'm glad Soderbergh shoved it forward. 8/10 (Koyaanisqatsi after reconsidering 9/10, Powaqqatsi 6/10)

In the hustle and bustle of a chaotic world, we often don't take the time to stop and really look at all the beautiful things that tend to pass us by unnoticed. It is Godfrey Reggio's aim in `Naqoyqatsi' – as it was in his previous `Koyaanisqatsi' and `Powaqqatsi' - to focus our attention on all the artistry inherent in the shapes, forms and patterns that make up our universe. His film is a succession of images, some of them derived from nature (clouds, ocean waves), others from Man (buildings and bridges), and others from computer-generated fantasy. These he filters through his observant camera eye, state-of-the-art processing and ingenious editing to create a cinematic tone poem. The element that most separates `Naqoyqatsi' from Reggio's earlier works is the much heavier reliance on camera trickery and CGI effects here. For the most part, Reggio has moved away from nature as his subject and towards the cyber realities of the current age. Thus, the altered emphasis in form seems not merely appropriate but thematically valid as well, as Reggio examines a world in which nature has been largely eclipsed by computer technology.

At the end of the film we are told that `Naqoyqatsi' is a Hopi word meaning, essentially, `war' and `violence.' I'm not sure, though, that Reggio has really earned that title with his film. True, he does include a few shots of mushroom clouds, of street riots, of violent video games, but they hardly account for the majority of the images we see. Perhaps it is the clash between nature and technology that he is referring to here, but the title – at least as defined at the end - still seems to fall a bit short of the mark.

Still, Reggio is often able to find poetry in even the most disturbing of images. For instance, there's an amazing shot of a trio of crash test dummies performing a macabre, yet strangely beautiful slow motion `dance' in a simulated airplane crash. It is but one of the many unforgettable images in the film.

Enhanced by the haunting music of Philip Glass, `Naqoyqatsi' offers a dazzling kaleidoscopic view of the world, a visual tour de force for the aesthetically inclined.

What a let down. Koyaanisqatsi was brilliant, Powaqatsi was quite good, Naqoyqatsi is the same thing all over again, without the beauty and profundity.

It's not that I don't sympathise with the meaning behind the film, but bombarding me with images of dollar signs and corporate logos is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The majority of those who view this movie do not need to be chaperoned around these issues.

The film feels structureless and jumps back and forth from one point to the next and then back again. I suppose you could argue that this reflects the chaotic nature of the films subject matter, but to me, that's just making excuses for a poorly conceived narrative.

The computer graphics don't work well at all. They often feel like an excuse to show of a few fancy special effects and already look dated (Max Headroom came to mind on several oc...oc...oc...occasions.). They just don't have the beauty of a 'real' image.

To add insult to injury, the film has been stretched out from a 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9 so all of the people appear distorted. This is because the stock footage used was 4:3 and they couldn't be bothered editing it to fit into a widescreen presentation. They just stretched the lot, and when you watch the DVD it is very noticeable. It's claimed that this was a deliberate move and not a decision based on technical difficulties, but I'm not sure.

Overall - I'd say watch koyaanisqatsi again - it's the only film out of the three worth repeated viewings.