Koyaanisqatsi (Life Out of Balance) - Reaction

An experimental film with no actors and no dialog, only images of man-made constructs and nature, all accompanied by music by Philip Glass. The simple music, slightly new age, sounds mostly synthesized and feels modern for the 80s.

At first, I didn't get the hang of the movie. I started to enjoy it more with the sped-up scenes of nature (e.g., clouds) and the man-made scenes: the series of buildings being detonated, and the sped-up recordings of cars driving, people walking, and items being assembled in a factory.

Most people think the movie is strongly pro-environment ("hippie"). Yet, I didn't get that same reaction. I didn't feel as if the world was out of balance. Indeed, I saw parallels between nature and mankind in the visuals of cloud flow, waves, and traffic when played at the appropriate speed. Likewise, one might think dams, with their dramatic differences from one side to the other, would demonstrate the world's imbalance. Yet, I saw the majesty in them. There's a certain appeal to their size, scope, and design.

I felt only two parts may have had a strong political or economic statement behind them: one was the scenes of rubbish and abandoned buildings; the other was the slow motion street scenes, mostly of sad, alienated people. Those two scenes hit hard on the "what are we doing to the earth" front.

Perhaps my general lack of a negative reaction to the contrasts presented was natural--the director says he didn't have strong intentions about how people should react to the film. I felt this neutrality most clearly in images of the sky reflected in the glass windows of skyscrapers. I couldn't determine what message I was supposed get. The director, in describing the film's agnosticism, said the film is about "awesome beauty, terrible beauty, or the beauty of the beast."

In the ultimate scene, a rocket climbs for the heavens. Then it explodes violently. The pieces descend, flaming, like a fallen angel. Interpret it as you will.