Visitors

Wow! The word review does not apply to this film. A review implies an explanation. Which in this case would be like trying to explain a vivid dream several hours later. This film truly is a cinematic experience. A journey that I was twenty five minutes into before I realized that I was not watching a film, but rather a film was watching me. Each emotional nuance expressed created a cascading effect of conscious questions and reflections of the artistry that was unfolding. Masterfully woven images driven by an exquisitely orchestrated musical score. The images accentuate the music, or the music enhances the images. Or it could be completely the other way around? I was fortunate enough to witness the world premiere of this masterpiece at TIFF. The Toronto Symphony Orchestra performed the soundtrack live. Which in itself was a most unique cinematic experience, I strongly suggest live musical accompaniment of film should be repeated not only here in Toronto, but Globally. Everything that is old is eventually new again. Godfrey Reggio, Sir you are a genius. You have created your own artistic genre, you have expanded on it, reinvented it and turned it around on itself to create something completely new. Philip Glass, Sir you are a genius, your music is the life blood of inspiration. To all the cast and crew of this gem of a film, congratulations! And thank you.

It's been a real privilege to have followed Godfrey Reggio's work from Koyaanisqatsi (1982) until his latest, Visitors, a bold and profound continuation of his cinematic vision and dialogue.

Some of the readers of the reviews of this movie will hopefully see the particularly relevant irony of those who lividly complain about this movie being "boring, "slow", "uninteresting", "pointless", "a waste of time", "worst movie ever", "watch in fast forward mode!". They may never appreciate that the long takes of people's faces, seemingly in trances, are simply reflections of their own faces in the Reggio mirror. They are looking at themselves as they spend most of their awake time - visually plugged into their Wide Screen TVs, computer screens, video games, movie screens, smart phones, etc.. Immediate gratification, exuberant sensory stimulation and simple short answers frustratingly pervade these commentators as it does our now screen-based civilization.

With the ubiquity of screen-based existence, humanity has changed drastically in only a few decades. It's up to you to decide if that's good or bad but if you are familiar with Reggio's work, it can pretty much be summed up as his artistic rendering of the impact industry and technology has had on us - our species - spiritually, culturally, socially, individually, artistically, commercially etc, and importantly, the parallel impacts these changes have had on nature. The continuous visual juxtaposition between humans and animals, between dead buildings and dead landscapes are pure Reggio, beautiful yet deeply dark, illustrating this parallel both literally and in layers of metaphor and symbolism. The inability to sense or comprehend these layers is, as always, a limitation of the viewer, not the artist.

The movie itself, is bold in a number of ways.

Style-wise, it is Reggio's first all black & white feature with all or much of the background transformed to black and foreground detail replaced with blown out whites - visually stunning. The underlying themes are so effectively brought out with this style. The complete lack of colour further emphasizes the addiction of our culture to sensory extremes which induce pleasing and intense moods/mental states that do not require physical motion (other than to actuate a mouse or remote control) and only require our eyes to be open and lock into the screen interface.

But the true boldness is that the focus of his "critique" is not generally towards modern human civilization (industry, war, human exploitation, environmental exploitation, poverty, etc..) as in his previous work but this time, there is a personal element mixed in with the more familiar artistic diatribe against technology. This time, you look into the Reggio mirror, and you see yourself staring, blankly, quasi-comatose, right back at yourself. You are watching yourself.. watch yourself, and it's not pretty. An unsettling realization for each and every one of us.

Relax, perhaps a glass of wine, settle down for an hour and a half, douse pre-expectations, open your mind and experience another Reggio masterpiece. Ask yourself what 'Visitor' means… Buddhists already know.

Visitors is an 87 minute journey through the electronically obsessed life as we know it today. The film forces you to stare deep into the soul of other beings experiencing life on this rock that we all are ultimately just...visiting and destroying at the same time.

The way the film stares out at you and forces you to stare back at it is nothing less than creative perfection. The cuts are just long enough for you to understand the message while making you squirm in your seat as you imagine each move of the character on-screen reflecting your very own movements in the audience.

I would recommend this film to anyone who appreciates great art in movement.

Having loved Koyaanisqatsi and its first sequel, I was looking forward to this film. In case anyone should think I'm unfamiliar with art-house films or anything without a conventional structure, I'm a serious arty film buff and avoid Hollywood or mainstream commercial cinema like the plague. Mostly I watch subtitled foreign films. I was also a Reggio/Glass fan. However, after 20 minutes I found Visitors so tiresome and boring that I fast-forwarded the rest, and in 5 minutes had reached the end. I realise this was supposed to be a trance-like film, but after a short time it was obvious what Reggio had to say (much the same as in Koyaanisqatsi), and it seemed almost like a pastiche of a Reggio/Glass film. It almost seemed as if the film had been made at normal speed and then shown in slo-mo to achieve a mesmeric effect, because to see it played faster didn't appear to miss much. I replayed the opening 20 minutes just to make sure.

I'm not familiar with Godfrey Reggio's work, but looking him up, he's an acclaimed documentary filmmaker who likes to make movies that have no real plots and instead relies on silent videos and images, set to usually very haunting music. Visitors seems to continue that trend by making a movie that from a visual perspective is fascinating to look at, but from a sit down and watch perspective is a little harder to view. In many respects, this film is basically a challenge to watch, but I don't regret seeing it, because after watching this film, I'm more interested in looking up this man's work than I ever was before.

Visitors has no real plot. Instead it is a film that tries to reveal humanity's "trace-like" experience with technology, which, when commandeered by extreme emotional states, produces massive effects that are far beyond human reach. The film uses footage in black and white of people and places to try and get a particular feeling from the audience.

The films opening should be a warning for the audience. It features a shot of a gorilla played to dramatic music that slowly pans to a shot of what looks like the moon. The first ten or so minutes of the movie is shots of people, but they are very still. It's an impressive feat, considering these are real people, and not trained professional actors. Despite this they manage not to move a muscle, back or forth.

The film has recurring motifs. Shots of the outside of a building are shown ten times or more. The film also has interesting ways of shooting; a slow motion shot of a man yawning, a closeup of kids on what appears to be a merry go round, going back and fourth, a shot of just three heads and so on. There are a lot of fascinating things to watch from a film fan perspective.

The music can go from being slow and mystical, but then it becomes very overpowering, and in some ways, interrupts the film.

Visitors is an interesting experiment. Out of the all of the films I've seen this year, this is probably the most bizarre and surrealistic of all them all. No plot, but the film pulls me in, because of how it is made. I can't really recommended this film to everyone, but I can say, if you're interested in watching a movie that is basically images and music, then go right ahead.