Nine months ago I started a little series called 'Films to Watch Before You Die', I'm not particularly sure how many films I had managed to conjure in total; it must have ended around the 30 mark until I decided to branch out and started just writing general reviews. The second recommendation, however, was 1999's Koyaanisqatsi by Godfrey Reggio, an experimental film that displays humankind's slow separation from nature.
This is a film I simply cannot forget, and I often find myself looking up short clips and being astonished by its sheer simplicity, yet incredible depth. It feels fitting to once again share my thoughts, and further spreads its accomplishments to a new set of followers that weren't around to originally see the piece.
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"If we dig precious things from the land, we invite disaster."
*Koyaanisqatsi is a film that cannot be explained in two or three scenes; it's a film where the 'it all just works' description does no justice, it simply stands alone as a feat that extends beyond traditional filmmaking and truly shows the artistic nature of being capable of capturing life in its utmost authenticity. The fact that setting up a camera and pointing it at a busy road for a few hours can display the sheer advances we've made, sitting in theatres and submitting ourselves to the projections of colours and sounds for entertainment, even just wondering throughout the streets and peaking into store windows; all of these events taking place every day, forgetting that at some point we painted our activities onto rock within caves.
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"Life out of balance."
*While Koyaanisqatsi often displays its footage of life alongside songs from the Hopi language, and the very meaning of Koyaanisqatsi is "life out of balance", the overall message isn't necessarily negative. Advancements certainly do mean change, but some change is positive. It often reminds us of the positive through our greatest achievements: attempting to venture into space and creating computers; although, the film ensures it doesn't allow us to forget the prices we've paid for such creations, nor does it allow us to forget the downright terrifying fact that we've evolved to such points in the very first place. These may be incredible times to live in, but the very fact that these times are happening shows an ongoing disconnect between the process of life, and the process of evolution. This is life out of balance with life itself.
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"A state of life that calls for another way of living."
*Our creations aren't entirely negative, but our continuous disconnect from life and lack of awareness of what we are destroying and where we have come from is evident in the film's scenes. Not everything calls for change, but our current ways display an overly-negative sentiment over life itself; we are becoming machines designed to consume and think only about events that directly benefit us and only us, even when it's blatant that such events are only further leading to our destruction; after all, our destructive behaviours are a result of such evolution and innovation. We are too ignorant to sit back and view this way of life to conclude that it calls for another way of living.
