The Qatsi trilogy
Image, sound, and a life out of balance
“It will change how you experience the world” is how the film was described to me by a fellow volunteer working at CND (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) in the early 1980s. She urged me to see it. Her cryptic response to my asking what it was about was ‘“that will be up to you”.
Koyaanisqatsi (1982)
I took her advice, and watching Koyaanisqatsi did change how I experienced the world. The director, Godfrey Reggio, has described the film as an exploration of the meaning of the Hopi word Koyaanisqatsi. The word is sung at the beginning over images of indigenous American rock art, followed immediately by a close up of a rocket launch. It is not translated into English until the end, after we see those images again (except that a different rocket is now disintegrating and spiralling back to Earth):
ko.yaa.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi language), n. crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living
There is no spoken language in the film (Reggio has explained that our language “no longer describes the world in which we live”). Speech is replaced by a powerful score, composed by Philip Glass, which includes choral interpretations of Hopi prophecies which warn of the dangers when humans set themselves against Nature.
Watching and listening to Koyaanisqatsi again last month on YouTube, here , was not the same as it had been in the cinema 40 years ago. But the content was just as mind blowing. Some of it I remembered, but much of it I now experienced differently, or had forgotten.
All documentaries reflect in some way the perceptions and prejudices of their creators. Koyaanisqatsi is no exception, but the absence of the spoken word means we are free to bring to the film our own interpretation of what we see and hear. We are active participants. What we focus on, and how we interpret it, varies from person to person. For me, this changed between the first and second viewing.
Reggio’s frequent use of slow motion and time lapse enables us to see things differently - things that are in plain sight, but whose significance is not immediately apparent. The opening scenes in Koyaanisqatsi, after the rocket launch, are of nature, apparently untouched by humanity. But, before the focus turns to our technologically-infused humanity, there is ambiguity. Clouds are followed by dust from minerals being stripped from the earth, exhaust from power plants, mushroom clouds from nuclear tests, what looks like an ICBM piercing through clouds, dust rising from the demolition of concrete tower blocks, and clouds reflected in the glass facades of corporate offices. Flowing water is another recurring image, appearing in a variety of different contexts, and sometimes hard to distinguish from clouds.
The juxtapositions of sound and image are always telling, as are juxtapositions within images, like the people sunbathing in front of what could be a nuclear power station. Occasionally, the focus shifts from the technological environment we inhabit to individuals, either unaware that we are staring at them or staring directly at us. The images, and the music, do not shy away from the possibility of seeing beauty in otherwise disturbing scenes showing industrial technology’s destruction of nature, or its exploitation of the workers who operate it and who consume its products.. This beauty is, after all, part of the seduction of technology. Examples include:
nighttime traffic on urban motorways, lighting up patterns that look like diagrammatic representations of circuits in the brain, or migraine aura
An advert flashing ‘Watch the shows you weren’t home for….at a price you can’t afford to miss’ , above vehicles slowed by a congested street.
People walking alongside a billboard exhorting them to “Taste the natural cigarette Real”, or in front of another one inviting them to “Have a barrel of fun.”
The precision, as well as the monotony, of assembly line work
The image of a circuit board that could be an urban grid, or a nighttime apartment block
the burning remains of a space rocket spiralling down from the sky (recalling the Icarus myth as well as Hopi prophecy)
An English translation of the Hopi prophecies that are sung in the film is left, like the translation of the title, until the end;
‘If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster’
‘Near the Day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky’
‘A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the ocean.’
Powaqqatsi (1988)
I didn’t see the other two Reggio/Glass Sqatsi collaborations - Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi - when they first appeared. I didn’t imagine a sequel would be possible. Viewing them after revisiting Koyaanisqatsi, though, I realise that they are not sequels, but explore wider aspects of the same reality, in a quite different style.
Where Koyaanisqatsi depicts a Northern hemisphere that is dominated by industrial technology, Powaqqatsi observes a Southern hemisphere that is still culturally diverse. But it’s a diversity that is under threat, not least from corporations based in the global North whose technologies depend on resources extracted from the global South.
The pre-title sequence , shot in a Brazilian open-pit gold mine, must be one of the most powerful indictments of the working conditions in mineral extraction ever filmed. What is particularly poignant is towards the end of the sequence, when we notice a Pieta like image - it is not just heavy sacks that are being lifted out of the mine but also an injured miner, who is nursing a head wound. The contrast between the appalling conditions in the mine and Glass’s joyous score is dramatic, just as is the contrast between how much gold as a commodity is valued and how little the men who extract it from the ground are valued.
po-waq.qat.si (from the Hopi language, powaq sorcerer + qatsi life) n., an entity, a way of life, that consumes the life forces of other beings in order to further its own life.
The first half of the film shows people in different African, Asian, or South American locations, still living in premodern communities and working mainly in harmony with nature. The mood changes when a freight train rattles across the screen. We then see a global South that is ‘developing’, with modern cities, high rise blocks and slums, TV adverts, traffic jams, armies, air pollution, rubbish dumps, barbed wire fences, and destitution alongside affluence.
There are similarities in the second half to the bleak environment of industrial North America in Koyaanisqatsi. Faces stare at us, though this time most of them are children. And people walk alongside a slogan, but one that is very different from the advertising billboards of Koyaanisqatsi. A little girl walks alongside a wall, clutching a bag. She is looking across the road to us, and stops to stare at the camera. Behind her, a slogan painted on the wall reads “VIVA LA GUERRA DE GUERRILLAS”.
Powaqqatsi ends with footage from the start, the body of the wounded miner being hauled out of the Serra Pelada pit, but this time shown as if he is submerged in water.
Naqoyqatsi (2002)
The pre-title sequence of Naqoysqatsi begins with Bruegel’s image of the Tower of Babel, and leads into an evocation of the faded splendour of a once ornate but now derelict Detroit rail station. The remainder of the film paints a grim picture of where we are heading. It anticipates a globalised digital nightmare, a mirror world that invades us, and takes away our ability to distinguish between what is real and what is fake. Nature has disappeared, as has the rusting industry of Detroit. We no longer operate machines, instead our data is uploaded into machines and used to control us. Our memories have become images, to be manipulated and played back to us. Many of those images are of military warfare - the physical violence of the state against other states, and against its people. But what is revealed in the film points beyond that, to a war on life itself.
Naqoyqatsi was intended as prophecy, but was already becoming a reality as the film was being made.
na.qöy.qatsi, n. from the Hopi Language <each other-kill many-life>., a life of killing each other, war as a way of life, (interpretation) civilized violence
Philip Glass’s sometimes angry but often mournful score is orchestral, a very different sound to the other Qatsi films. It includes the cello playing of Yo-Yo Ma and the soprano vocals of Lisa Bielawa. The music provides a human aural counterpoint to the synthetic nightmare portrayed visually on the screen.
“Naqoyqatsi takes us on an epical journey into a land that is nowhere, yet everywhere, the land where the image itself is our location, where the real gives way to the virtual.”
The earlier qatsi films show the real beauty of nature, alongside the ugliness of modern industrial civilisation. In Naqoyqatsi, the beauty is artificial, created by the same technology that is invading our minds and bodies. The cello and soprano voices evoke the cries of resistance that are needed if we are to stand up for humanity, against the synthetic reality into which we are being drawn.
It’s a reminder that we don’t have to accept the destruction of our humanity that is taking place at an ever accelerating pace.. But that we have to hold the line, and start the fight that will restore our integrity, and that of the living planet.
Wonderful post.