"Naqoyqatsi"
Miramax Films
Directed by Godfrey Reggio
Written by Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass
Produced by Joe Beirne, Lawrence Taub and Godfrey Reggio
Rated PG
Opens Friday at Brewvies Cinemapub
(out of four)

"Naqoyqatsi" employs a wide range of new technologies to explore and throw into question the benefits and risks of technology. This irony isn’t on the mind while watching the film because the visuals are so striking, but thinking about it afterward, I went to the Institute for Regional Education’s Web site at www.koyaanisqatsi.org, and in regard to the company’s use of the Internet, the page said the following:

"If entering the medium questioned to raise questions seems contradictory, this is because it is. To freely embrace this contradiction is the motivation for this site."
While this contradiction may not be the motive of the film, Godfrey Reggio embraces every format he works with, from archival sampling to computer animation.

If not completely famous, the first two films of the "Qatsi" trilogy are among the most popular experimental films of the last few decades. Still, the tone poems "Koyaanisqatsi" (1983) and "Powaqqatsi" (1988) didn’t give anyone the confidence to fund the final installment until director Steven Soderbergh became an executive producer and Miramax helped with the funding.

Fans of experimental film or abusers of acid are probably already familiar with the trilogy, but those who are interested in learning more about the way the film medium can be explored might find it a good place to start since it uses tangible things to create poetic imagery.

The trilogy is the work of director Reggio and composer Philip Glass, who wrote the feature-length scores that occupy the entire audio of each film. The names come from the Hopi Indian language. "Koyaanisqatsi" means "life out of balance," "Powaqqatsi" means "life in transformation" and "Naqoyqatsi" means "a life of killing each other."

The film explores the global world climate with an emphasis on technology and the military. The film opens with a rendering of the destroyed Tower of Babel, recalling Fritz Lang’s "Metropolis," then cuts to a ruined building with broken windows. The camera sweeps around, catching the light and the city through windows before cutting to snow falling on the ocean and time lapse photography clouds and nature.

The film continues on with the series of images, using 3-D computer animation to create tunnels and other things with ones and zeros, to show a digital floor plan for a park, to create an invasion of computer icons, etc. The barrage of images in an early animation sequence contains Einstein receiving a brain scan and Adam’s hand moving toward a higher being’s from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel artwork. The first 30 minutes are so visually stunning, and though some parts later on in the film lag, there are excellent moments throughout.

Other highlights include a sequence in which famous paintings morph into one another and a trip through a wax museum with famous people including Abraham Lincoln and George W. Bush.

There are details to decipher, such as the continuing appearance of military footage from multiple countries and wars. Formations are edited and looped to show the same sort of technicality that the ones and zeros of digital coding have. Technology is also shown through wartime weapons, to drive the connection home (in case no one picked up on it).

Glass’s score is beautiful, and alters the tone of the scenes while it signals the beginning and ending of new sequences.

For the sake of fair warning, there are no words in the entire movie, except for a deep voice chanting the title at the beginning and end. So people who are used to standard Hollywood narratives might not fall in love with the film, but fans of the past films will find similar qualities to the previous installments of this ambitious time-and-space spanning trilogy that took two decades to complete.
jeremy@red-mag.com