Koyaanisqatsi the Message

Godfrey Reggio’s film Koyaanisqatsi commented the urban lives in a negative but artistic way. With no dialog or narration, he contrasted the solitary, ageless beauty of nature with the frenetic urban lifestyle, accompanied only by Philip Glass’ extraordinary music score, so as to provoke the audience to reconsider their lives and meanings in the urban space.

Not only Reggio’s portraits of the urban space in no way reveal the prosperous mood and glamour of modern metropolis, they are also strong protests against those discourse on the achievements of capitalism and consumption. The daytime cities are shot in dead silence, with people rarely seen. Rotten urban blocks, housing estates, Harlem streets and even their demolition are shown to the audience. With Glass’s score building to a crescendo, the tempo of the visual images accelerating and the editing becoming more fragmented, ensembles of dizzying and kaleidoscopic images of moving urban citizens are created to represent the hectic pace of modern society. The film maker first shot all images with fixed positions against moving environments, then towards the end of the film, it joins the moving crowds in shuffling speedily in cities through highways and all kinds of public space — the audience is like part of the mobility but not knowing the destinations — we are going nowhere in the process of urbanisation and we have no idea of where we are going. With the lingering of this visual repetitions, the audience are forced to think hard of the day-to-day lives of themselves and it would not take long for one to understand and agree to Reggio’s criticism about the emptiness of city lives and mobility.

Before entering into the last chapter of the film (the space shuttle taking off), Reggio made a dramatic touch on describing the urban crowd living and moving like ghosts. With the multiple exposed images of the moving crowd shuffling around some counters, this shots are unique among all images in the film and lasted only a few seconds though, they have the strongest connotation all through the film — man is totally ‘dehumanised’ and ‘de-personified’ in the advancement of urbanisation and technology. Although Reggio never tried to portray the personal lives of people living in the urban space — he described them as a whole — his images harmonised with what Georg Simmel wrote about “… the intensification of nervous stimulation” (Wolff, 1950), one characteristic of urban life according to his observations, gradually disable the emotional reflex of ones’ responses to their surroundings. Urban people have to take away their emotional response to people and things and learn to take them only intellectually, or quantitatively. It IS the feeling one will get after 90 minutes of viewing.

It is highly satirical that Reggio uses the explosion of the space shuttle, which represents the most advanced technology in modernisation, to end the film in a negative tone. It is shocking to see that the space shuttle exploded in the sky when everybody is expecting it to bring mankind somewhere. With the long shot following the fragments of the exploded space shuttle falling, the accompanying male solo bass ‘lamenting’ the title of the film and a concluding explanation of the Hopi Indian word, Reggio’s vision of the future is clearly pessimistic.

Reggio’s satiric vision echoes with what James Cameron wrote about how he went down with the submersibles to the abyssal depths of the North Atlantic to see the remains of the Titanic. During the hours of descending to the wreck site with his submersibles, “… [t]here was plenty of time to reflect on the fact that we were completely dependent on the successful functioning of countless technological systems in order to reach and photograph the ultimate symbol of technological failure — Titanic.” (Mash, 1998:v) What makes mankind proud of himself, his intellectual and technological competence which makes him triumph over nature, will ultimately bring him to serious catastrophic disaster. This is certainly the message the film Koyaanisqatsi is trying to convey. Of course it is even more satirical that man like Reggio had to rely on technology (like speeded-up time-lapse cinematography) to portrait its flaws.

Koyaanisqatsi as Art

Reggio is paradoxical in his intention and standpoint regarding the film as a piece of art. On one hand his titling of the film as Koyaanisqatsi reveals significantly the message he wanted to communicate and provided an authentic direction for its interpretations. On the other he claimed that the film as a piece of art “has no intrinsic meaning”, “nor does it have a specific meaning or value.” His totally visual approach, with no narrative, no character and no dialog, facilitates the gleaning of all possible meanings resulted from the experience of the encounter of the audience with the images. It fulfils Reggio’s intention of making the film to “provoke, to raise questions that only the audience can answer.” (http://www.koyaanisqatsi.org/films/koyaanisqatsi.php)

Reggio’s action of ‘setting free’ the film makes him falls into alliance with abstract expressionists like Robert Motherwell, David Smith, Jackson Pollock who eagerly named their paintings “untitled”. By doing so they believed that they can set free at the very beginning the associating perceptions the audience may have because of the titles. Art is then correctly respected and becomes totally autonomous in driving the flow of thoughts of the audience, beyond the control and expectations of the artist himself. The process of interpretation emancipates the potentialities of art itself. Like brush strokes, colours, lines and forms in paintings, Reggio’s stunning montages of landscapes, buildings, clouds, streets, faces and machines are then defined for their own sake when presented with no narration — they speak for themselves authentically. They are not bounded by the “literary” ways of manifestations. The film then became a total entity by itself, independent from its film makers. It may be full of meanings and associations during the shootings, but not necessarily corresponds to anything within the audience’s minds. Art like this speaks differently from audience to audience, but the paradoxical nature of Koyaanisqatsi, although without narration, still successfully keeps the audience’s thoughts in a certain framework as intended by Reggio, and this may be why the film made such an immense success.

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Bibliographic references
Mash, E. W. (1998). "James Cameron’s Titanic". London: Boxtree.
Reggio, G. (http://www.koyaanisqatsi.org/films/koyaanisqatsi.php)
Simmel, G. (1903). “The Metropolis and Mental Life” in Wolff, K. H. (ed.) (1950). "The Sociology of Georg Simmel", p.409–424. New York: The Free Press.

Uh, The last shot in the film was NOT the space shuttle.
It was stock Air Force footage of an Atlas rocket mishap from the early 1960's

I have seen this film about 12 times, heck I even have an original IRE DVD, one of the themes of this film is "man's destruction" of our Mother Earth.
After a few viewings, I've come to realize that we ain't so bad. Meaning of all the things man has created over the last century really is something we should all be proud of.

> Uh, The last shot in the film was NOT the space shuttle.
> It was stock Air Force footage of an Atlas rocket mishap from the early
> 1960's

Thank you for the clarification.

> After a few viewings, I've come to realize that we ain't so bad.
> Meaning of all the things man has created over the last century really is
> something we should all be proud of.

While I believed Reggio commented the urban lives in a negative way, I may not totally agree with him on this. But when I reconsider what and where should mankind be proud of ourselves, maybe we should see if all these accomplishments or "creations" (if they are really creations) helped us learn to love one another or learn to appreciate and praise the Maker of Mother Earth.

Being proud or not being proud


Thinks so I didn't want to say the Reggio "everything urban and technological is bad" I rather think this he wanted to show which abnormal excesses the overmechanization accepts and how man suffers from it. Koyanisqatsi isn't generally aimed at freeways and large towns for me but against the eight-track urban expressways much rather and towns as greatly as smallcountries arranged as electronic wirings. It is one where lives are shown outside the balance will lead this if we make what as further as till now but we shall this sweep not meant mandatorily back to the caves. One surrenders only in front of one whole New York in caves then must move completely unthinkably especially after very much more people would suffer very much worse. No, one is a little the technology on this quite impressively can be it mustn't become the technology only for the end in itself not has to serve us people the other way round. Every animal adapt to its surroundings Man doesn't at only . He invented the technology to adapta nature to himself unfortunately he must adapt to the technology now, in the meantime, the machines have got more exact and more reliable and faster than him. We have made slaves ourselves, denaturiert and degenerated, to say it in a extreme way and I believe this you shown in Koyanisqatsi.

I ask most politely to forgive me for my bad one English.
Greet Hannes Brandstätter

any idea on how I can get a copy of the IRE release??? I'm down to begging.

Tim