Koyaanisqatsi

1982 visual poem

Rating: 20/20 (Jen: 17/20; Emma: 11/20; Buster: fell asleep)

Plot: Plot?

This has been one of my favorite movies since I first saw it, probably because I'm a sucker for movies where people are moving really fast. I mean, Godfrey Reggio is really just ripping off Benny Hill for most of this movie, only doing it far more pretentiously and with less slapstick. I'm amazed that this movie--one that took six years to create including three years for the score--was anybody's first movie. One, it's so ambitious. Two, it's completely flawless. Three, it's so original. Actually, don't quote me on #3 there because I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm unaware of a predecessor to Koyaanisqatsi, but there are probably a lot of examples of visual art that led up to this, though probably not feature-length films or anything calling itself a documentary. It's the kind of movie you watch a lot of while holding your breath. And it's the type of movie--the rarest of movies--where you want somehow watch yourself watching the movie if that makes any sense at all. It probably doesn't. I was a little mad at my family when watching this. They wouldn't stop talking, told me that it didn't matter because the movie had no dialogue, and didn't appreciate this nearly as much as they were supposed to. Shame on all of them, and they're lucky they weren't all disowned on the spot. Flawless visually, Koyaanisqatsi also has one of the best scores of all time. I can't imagine a more perfect marriage of music and imagery than what's happening here with Reggio's photography and the stunning music of Philip Glass. Glass had no interest in scoring movies, but was convinced by stuff Reggio showed him, and it's just a heavenly blending of talents. Reggio, once he was given Glass's music, then recut the movie again to better match the music. It's just bliss, the sounds and pictures so naturally streaming together as one entity and flowing right to your groin. At least my groin. I can't think of a movie where what you hear and what you see manages to work together so well to become what you feel. There are moments from movies, mostly movie moments that do it partially because of nostalgia--Raiders or Star Wars with John Williams, for example, where it blends well because it's just so fucking familiar; chunks of 2001, maybe, where it feels like the cosmos is composing classical music; probably one or two scenes from Smokey and the Bandit--that have the same effect, but we're talking about an hour and a half here. And the blend is strange since a lot of this movie is about clashing--the clash between nature and people, landscape and industrialization, early man's philosophy and contemporary man's philosophy, stillness and movement, calm and chaos, peacefulness and violence. They're images and sounds that say so much but without preaching. It's bombast, but so poetic and pure that you forgive the whole thing. This stuff you soak in, from the rolling landscapes to the jumbo jet choreography to the implosions to the blurs of humanity and vehicles to the swooping deserts and oceans to the swooping urban landscapes to the shots of people looking directly into the camera and watching us from the late-70's and probably thinking that we're as beautiful as we think they are. Yes, guy with sideburns and a mullet and a shirt with a giant eagle on you. I'm watching you and digging your natural beauty. And guy enjoying a double scoop of pink ice cream? Eat it well, my friend. Eat it well. And then, slow down, for there's a giant moon that looks like it had to have been Ansel Adamsed up there on the screen. And that thing's bigger than all of us. Even bigger if you saw this on a theater screen. There are not a lot of movies I care about seeing on anything but my television or, in some cases, on my phone. This is one of the few that I'd like to see on the big screen, probably sitting there with a piece of candy stuck to my face and a profound boner.

I wish I could be more poetic in writing about this movie. It deserves better than what I can do here. Seriously, Koyaanisqatsi doesn't deserve a write-up that ends with the word boner. Or maybe, if you think about it, that's exactly what it deserves.