Koyaanisqatsi - Life out of balance

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Godfrey Reggio (1940, New Orleans) is a poet, a great lover of the beauty of the image who with his Koyaanisqatsi (1982) has taken the merit of putting in its right context the film genre of the poem by images. The film represents a glance exploring the complicated relationship between humanity and Nature: does there exist an equilibrium between cosmic perfection and Man? Koyaanisqatsi is the answer, a word in the Hopi language (an ancient tribe of Arizona) meaning life without either order or stability. Reggio’s visual experience finds strong support in the musical score of Philip Glass (1937, Baltimore), massive and agonising as it is, to reinforce the spectator with a sense of responsibility towards that Mother Earth of which we are quite often forgetful. Glass is a composer who knew how to reinvent himself a countless number of times, regaling the cinema with exceptionally refined soundtracks for films such as The Truman Show (1998) and Notes on a Scandal (2007). With the Qatsi trilogy (after Koyaanisqatsi Reggio also directed Powaqqatsi in 1988 and Naqoyqatsi in 2002), instead, the composer concurs with the prophecies of the Hopi by conveying his Buddhist principles into a music having the force of truth and the mysticism of the promise. The Glass score is in full syntony with the emotions of Reggio’s images, completing their sense. In particular the composer makes use of rhythms which seem to be ancient and in harmonic connection to the universal spirit of nature, singsong voices which send us back to a half-dream state where open boundless spaces are represented, while enclosed crowded places attract prickly metallic sounds.
The film opens with images of an intact Nature, in which man’s absence appears to be fully justified. As approaching to the “civilised world”, the majesty of the buildings creates a sense of oppression inside the spectator, which unconsciously starts looking for support in someone resembling him. So we see faces with the eyes of those who do not ask for anything and expect everything, the glances of who, whether being aware or not, takes part in the mystery of Life. It is demeaning to define Koyaanisqatsi as modern society’s simple denunciation in favour of an ecological and No-Global morality. In a much deeper sense, the film faces up to the theme of vast human potentials which, if exploited injudiciously, inevitably lead to confusion and loss of equilibrium, indeed to “Koyaanisqatsi”.
The final images show a rocket taking off towards the infinite universe, but which owing to a fault explodes and falls back to earth. A rather significant conclusion: the target was a very ambitious one and many were the mistakes committed by men. Ron Fricke’s photography is not only extraordinary, but forms the basis of the whole sense of the film: it is the point of convergence between beauty and meaning. And the rhythm of the images is perfectly parallel to the music. It is interesting to see how Reggio’s message keeps being topical, notwithstanding its distance in time. On the other hand, it is well known, great directors manage to understand reality by moving beyond time and geographical limits.

Giulia Colella

a student at the Scientific Lyceum of Gallarate