To me this movie was just a bunch of random images (albeit very nice ones) edited together fancifully. I found no connection between them and therefore no message. The wax figure montage was especially puzzeling. I guess i'd need to watch it again to pick up on the obviously subtle meaning this movie has. The imagery itself is quite compelling though, so much so that on its own it was enough to keep me entertained.
shareyou're an ignorant person, man... just try to think
shareWe're all "ignorant" at one point or another, so i don't think that really matters, and as a matter of fact, I give Narf credit for asking questions when he/she doesn't get what the point is, and wants to know. For example, Narf said:
"To me this movie was just a bunch of random images (albeit very nice ones) edited together fancifully. I found no connection between them and therefore no message. The wax figure montage was especially puzzeling."
To me, the images were metaphor's describing how we live. The first set of images are a metaphor for the tower of babel, and how foolish it was for those people in the past to try and build something like that, and how we are doing it today with technology, trying to make advancements that we aren't ready for, and that not only end with our isolating ourselves, and eliminating ourselves from the picture, but also by our downfall, as noted by the emptiness and broken-down state that the building was in. There's a particularly interesting scene (one of my favorites) with a kaliediscope-like view, that I take to indicate how we are spiraling down, out of control, and just when we think we've gotten to the bottom, we realize we haven't even touched the surface, and that the rabbit hole goes down much further then it may seem (admitingly, i've been watching too much Matrix). As for the wax figure montage, it made me think of how realistic illusions may seem, and how we can just about copy anything these days, even though we know that they're illusions, some of them were fairly good, and the most obvious metaphor of all is the crash test-dummy one, in which we ourselves have become the test dummies for the technological vehicles of the future (cell phone's and the associated radiation may be our lead in the pipes that contributed to the down-fall of roman society, or pesticides, or other chemicals we use to make our lives "easier," that is in the short term) are making us lose our natural connection to the world and living a balanced life, which can really only be seen in the other two movies in the trilogy.
From your post i take it that you haven't seen those other two movies, but i think they help a lot in understanding the message of the movies, and in my opinion, it is almost a message being sent out in another language (a non-verbal one), but the language of imagry and music, and because of that it may be confusing at first, but the more you watch it and think about it the more you start to learn this new language (which is one of the reasons i suspect that the title comes from the hopi language, because the english language is inadequate, there are no words in english to describe the ideas put forth).
i would hazzard a guess that the imagery of the derelict building at the start of the film is telling us that this was once a pride of human construction, the intricatley crafted windows and the epic granduer of the structure has been left to rot because humanity has evolved and now pursues other creative avenues, what was once important is now no more than a blot on the urban landscape. We live in a society where worlds are created within computers. Once wars were fought on battle fields now wars can be fought and won from thousands of miles away.
this film is about war, humanity at war with one another, technology at war with tradition, religion against science, analogue vs digital, human's at war with nature and mother earth.
Essentially the idea of the structure of these films are for the viewer to personalise it around the vagueness of the film's cue cards "life in transformation" "life out of balance" "life as war" whatever you take from this film is what was intended by its producers. the purpose is to draw a deep emotional response and breed some sort of realisation that the world is a complicated and beautiful place.
The building at the start of the film was a CGI rendering of a 16th century painting by Bruegel called "Little Babel," which portrayed *ta-da* the Tower of Babel. This is incredibly important if you want to understand the film.
sharethe film, containing no words or dialouge, is open to interpretation. Reggio, in the NYU Discussion panel describes the trilogy: Koyaanisqatsi is about North America and upper class countries contrast with nature, Powaqqatsi was about more third world countries and their cultures death by the advancement of technology, Naqoyqatsi is about the "globilazation" (although I'm paraphrasing, I know he used that word) of the entire world into a computer generated, structured world that promises safety but in the end produces apathy and "civilized violence"
I see the film divided into chapters of ways we have lost our identities:
Loss of Identidy through mathematics
Loss of Identidy through conformity
Loss of Identidy through physical perfection
Loss of Identidy through over anylization of the human body (when does a human stop becoming a human and become a skeleton surrounded by tissue, organs, and a layer of skin?)
Loss of Identidy through "cultural facism"
Loss of Identidy through apathy
Loss of Identidy through obsession of normality
Loss of Identidy through obsession of unimportant things
Some parts of the film seem quite clear - the apoctalypic opening sequence when we see the ruins of mankind that is "a window to our civilization" (literally)And after that some brief scenes that seem to show the bringing about of this apocalypse.
are there are obvious themes of man trying to "tame" nature - i.e. the crops, the dam, and the trees planted in rows of columns that are destroyed by a nuclear blast - the idea is that when nature becomes "tamed" and "safe" it is no longer nature at all.
I was right in the middle of a reptile zoo, and somebody was giving booze to these goddamn things.
So it's not the Roman Colosseum?
shareWell there's a constructive comment. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you were as equally baffled by the film as narf is.
The film is a collection of seemingly random shots, yes, but as with the other films in this series, there are many underlying narratives in each sequence (and a larger narrative for the film as a whole). The cinemtography is fantastic, and the movement within these shots provide much of the narrative.
You have to actively think when you watch this movie. Each sequence is important. Check out the movie Baraka. It's directed by Ron Fricke who was the cinemetographer for the first film in this series, Koyaanisqatsi. I find that it's a little more blatant with it's themes. It's heavily influenced by Koyaanisqatsi, and it's the first film of this type that I watched.
I'm actually in the middle of watching it, but one part that seems to make sense to me is the sheep, and the part right after it. I think it's about cloning, you see the doubles of the sheep moving around, and i remember a couple of years back there was that famous cloned sheep. Then right after it you see these gymnasts with perfect bodies, and echoes of their motion similar to what was done to the sheep. So yeah, that part i think is about cloning/our search for perfection. Just a thought
share[deleted]
I have not seen "Life as Transition," though "Life out of Balance" was....words fail. It was a long time building to see it, but worth it.
"Life as War" seems more disjointed, and some of the visual techniques are a bit jarring and, sadly, seem a bit dated. The colour saturation of negative images got a bit tired, and the CGI seems to 1. show its age--perhaps itself a commentary on the pace of life--and 2. seems a bit showy.
The second act seemed to veer onto a bizarre tangent obsessed with American marketing culture and politics. Between that and all the computer images, like the fractals--which were visually stunning--there seemed to me a lack of thematic focus.
Of course, in a film with no dialogue and no discernable plot, many things are open to interpretation.
it's all there for a reason, including the "dated photoshopped look", on the DVD there's an informative 50 minutes discussion with the makers who explain everything.
shareI think that there are people in this panel that has a good insight of the movie and perhaps could help me make sense of one particular sequence inthe middle of it. There appears images of various peoples (some suposed good others bad) including Reagan, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Collin Powell??, The Pope and end with Bush. After that a "involution" animals, birds, fish and vegetals.Is this a turnning point in the movie?
shareThank you! That was point I was trying to make. And for those who don't get it read the main definition: "Life as war".
shareIt may seem a bit dated to some or a bit pretentious to others, but i really liked it: whatever the consensus.... i'd never seen it before and watched it wrecked out of my head on ecstasy. Turn the sound down and listen to some Killing Joke..... it works much better.
shareI've just watched this film & looked it up on imdb straight away and don't understand anyone with anything negative to say about it...sorry, you're just a different species to me! This is something else, above film-making. Maybe the greatest thing is that the viewer takes his/her own understanding from the images/music and in those terms it left me speechless.
shareI have only seen half of the film, as it was on BBC2 (UK television) at like 2am this morning. From what I saw, I could understand that the film is communicating the message that as a culture, we are moving farther and farther away from bieng human. As a culture, we are obsessed with aesthetics, spectacle, and ease. It is a (slightly technophobical) representation of technology sapping the spirit - and how we, as a world, are trying to re-build eden around us, and are doomed to fail.
shareJust a philosophical thought (and maybe i'm playing devil's advocate)
Reggio seems to give a negative connotation to the search for perfection (partially because of its dehumanizing effect, partly for its role in justifying violence against other humans, etc). However, can't the Tower of Babel be seen as a noble effort at directly communing with the Source?
I'm throwing this out there because Naqoyqatsi made me feel pride, for the first time in my life, in my humanness. Many of the "perpetrators" of the technological evil (Einstein, and even earlier, Da Vinci, both shown in the film) were simply men trying to find a better way to understand the world around them, while others (the politicians shown in the wax museum, for example) but those speculations and theories into practice, for good or for evil. The positive effect is that those talented individuals among us are able to reach higher, go faster, think more deeply than at any other point in time. The negative effect is that the average (read, the majority) are viewed as pawn pieces, to be tested, moved, and utilized for some grand purpose or other (military, angry revolutionary mob, home team supporters, etc)