Naqoyqatsi

2002 90 minute music video

Rating: 14/20 (Dylan: 12/20; Abbey: 18/20)

Plot: Completion of Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass's "Qatsi" trilogic collaboration. This one is all about civilized violence and, seemingly, the war against humans and information/technology.

Skulls of tomorrow become geological. Hyperspeed blizzards. Now I'm a computer bored by my own data. "Nice screen saver you've got there, Captain Handpants." "Thanks, little man. Thanks." Kaleidoscopic carpet soldiers and technicolor ebb and flow, the violence of 1's and 0's, a ballet of agile splotches and whirls, redundant athletes. Ya know, you can guffaw, but only if you do it artistically and in black and white. Andy Warhol should have directed Tron, I'm thinking. Pop and circumstances, Wassily Kandinsky ejaculates on a cookie and demands that the people of the future eat it. A flash of Elton John, fireworks, gism, glitter, and then an astronaut baby! Madonna's cleavage just sold me a strawberry and all of the information I will ever need. No, there's all the information I need, coming directly from the mouths of mute wax figurines. Mushroom Claude knocked on my door just to grope me, but at least he did it delicately. No complaints. Now, there's synchronized crash dummy hi-jinks. Is there a good team here? A bad team? A fuzzy middle? "This hamburger is making me God-damn giddy." Wait, who said that? Who even said that? Art dissolves.

This seemed more Fantasia than Koyaanisqatsi, but I liked it a lot more than I thought I would and at least as much as the second film of the trilogy which bored me. Glass's score is good (and features Yo Yo Ma), and the visuals were interesting even if the computer effects used were a little dated and pedestrian. Tortured stock footage, abstract, and at times completely engrossing. Huge chunks of the imagery I could have done without, but not, I repeat, not that extended slow motion shot of a woman laughing at a hamburger. This seems to pea-brained me to lack the singular statement of the previous two in the trilogy, but I was still sucked in.

Me, half computer: