MovieChat Forums > Powaqqatsi (1988) Discussion > Disappointing waste of time

Disappointing waste of time

posted 18 years ago by Ellsass
10 replies | jump to latest

I *love* Koyaanisqatsi and find myself rewatching it constantly. Naturally I was looking forward to Powaqqatsi, and wow was it rubbish.

The montage was semi-random, constantly jerking back and forth and up and down between different visuals, ideas, themes, etc. While Koy was ambiguous and open-ended, it still had a general arc spanning the film that held it together. No such luck with Pow.

The pacing of Pow was awful. And I don't mean that it was too slow, but that it was very inconsistent and totally lacking flow. It felt more like flipping through channels than watching a single work.

The music was pretty detracting. Again there wasn't much of a theme, and it spent way too long on a couple movements yet barely gave others time to develop. But the worst part is that it didn't weave into the visuals at all -- it was distant and distracting.

I appreciate the content of Pow in the same way as Koy, but the execution was just awful. And I rarely dislike movies. I understand Pow had a different cinematographer than Koy, but it felt like it had the same cinematographer yet different director and composer.

[–] fryky 18 years ago

What I don't like too much about this film is that it tends to idealize the Third world. And I really thought that the images were beautiful and the music was great as well, but I couldn't help thinking about those people's everyday life.
While I´m sitting down in front of my computer, in my warm office, those who appeared in the movie are most surely working out their asses in a gold mine or in the middle of the desert and not being payed enouigh to feed their families.
Maybe I've taken the message to literarely.
What do you think? I definetely think technology has a huge influence on us. Sometimes for better and others for worse, but I don't think this is the best way to express it.

[–] Yexx 18 years ago

Idealize the Third World? At what point? During the long sequence where people are breaking their backs in a rock mine? How about the scene where the child is engulfed by a cloud of dirt blown from a passing truck? Maybe the scene where scraggly old men drag massive cartfuls of items?

There is no idealization of the Third World here at all; at most, there was an idealization of nature, but that is a different matter altogether.

What this film does idealize is the integrity of a people that is forced to labor in the harsh conditions that you've described, yet still finds the hope to continue slaving away. And for what are they slaving away, drilling oil, mining gold, mining copper, sewing clothing, etc.? They slave away for you and me, so that we can drive our cairs, sit at our computers in warm offices, buy cheap clothing at the Gap, etc. Without the exploitation of third world laborers, us people in the developed world would not have these luxuries, and that, more than anything, is what Powaqqatsi is about.

[–] AngelikiCoconi 11 years ago

Finally, somebody who gets what the film is about... Very refreshing to read. Most of the opinions are utter rubbish!

[–] sarahz911 18 years ago

I have it on good authority that the director was stoned out of his gourd most of the time, especially during post-production.

You can have the best, most visually spectacular footage and if the director edits it badly it's junk. I have a personal connection to the movie (my father was DOP) so I am a bit biased when it comes to the visuals. But I do have to agree it's poorly put together.

[–] itsmedianneb 17 years ago

you hit the nail right on the head---what you said is exactly what is SO wrong with this movie. It would have been an excellent production if Nat'l Geographic got ahold of the footage. Actually, I'm pretty sure they have their own production company producing vids of the harsh realities of life on earth.

[–] fuzzy_wunz 17 years ago

I think you missed the irony in what you wrote. Or do you really prefer pseudo documentaries with exhaustive narration from well-fed celebrities?

[–] jevicci 16 years ago

I agree. While this movie had some truly great images and shots, it lacked the impact of Koyaanisqatsi, at least for me. It seemed forced and just thrown together. There also wasn't the creative touch to these shots. Instead of looking at things in a different way, which Koyaanis did beautifully, it was mostly all just scenes slowed down or slow zoom-outs, which got very tiresome.

Another way this falls far short of Koyaanis for me is the music. In Koyaanis the music is haunting and really resonated with me. I didn't care for the music in this movie at all.

[–] rafael.clark 15 years ago

Exactly my problem with Pow: the soundtrack.
The music in Koy was hauting (I'm listening to it right now on my cell phone). "Vessels" is wonderful!
But, in Pow, I didn't really care for the ethnic songs. It seemed too cliché to use tribal chants, drums and other "different" instruments while showing the 3rd World.
I'm Brazilian and I live in Brazil and I get tired of seeing my country associated with poverty, samba, naked children in the dirt... There's so much more to the 3rd World! But the soundtrack misses this point completely.
So, I guess I understand the user who said that Pow "idealizes" the poorer countries. The movie seems to only see a side of these countries.

Koy - 10/10
Pow - 7/10
Naqoy - not available in DVD here in Brazil... =(

[–] yihdzelonh 8 years ago

I just finished watching.......or *ahem*....'trying' to watch Powaqqatsi. I felt that although the cinematography was excellent and the music pretty good....it was basically far too monotonous, repetitive, and purposeless.....very, very boring. I skipped through large parts of the movie. The movie could have been much better at being only half as long.

"Chronos" by Ron Fricke does everything right: It doesn't spend too much time on any one scene or one location and the pacing is slow, then fast, then slow.

[–] avortac4 (3529) 2 months ago

I agree with the consensus of this thread.

Sequels rarely work, there's a reason why none of us can name more than a handful of ACTUALLY good sequels, if we are being honest.

There's something so different about crafting an original, unique masterpiece, filled with uncertainty and sweating to make it as good as possible, and about the philosophy of 'oh, it was a success, let's crank out another one to make even more money!'-kind of attitude and thinking.

I realize my views on movies and sequels, trilogies and such do not align very well with general consensus - Back to the Future, The Matrix, Alien, The Terminator - in my opinion, those are standalone movies, and whatever came after, is lackluster at best, and coherency-destroying at worst.

"I appreciate the content of Pow in the same way as Koy"

I don't understand what you mean. Could you please elaborate? You appreciate the content? What?

Also, can't you type the actual names of the movies, do you have something against the names Powaqqatsi and Koyaanisqatsi?

What do you mean you appreciate it the same WAY? In what way? Are there multiple ways to appreciate... content? What do you mean by 'content'?

I have so many questions about this baffling statement.. and only now I noticed it was written about 18 years ago, so maybe never mind, you probably don't even remember what you meant.