I started watching Koyaanisqatsi not knowing what to expect. I had heard what it was going to be like from other students and I began to dread having to sit through this movie. I don’t have electricity in my house at this moment, let alone Wifi to stream the video online, so I had to sit in a local Starbucks to watch this documentary. As I settled in at the conveniently provided desk with my cup of coffee, I began watching the movie, preparing myself for a long and boring 87 minutes.
The first thing that caught my attention was the music. The music was grand and dramatic, at times both calming me and increasing my interest. It seemed to hint at the importance of the images being shown. It added to the immensity of the canyons and deserts on screen. From these to sunlit streaming through the clouds in the sky, waterfalls and oceans, the first part of the movie revealed the enormity of the world around us and how small we are by comparison. I am always especially impressed by the ocean, with its rolling and crashing waves. It seems as if these aspects of nature are ever-present and beyond our control. Our lives and actions seem small and insignificant and it seems almost surreal to think that our actions could forever alter these parts of nature.
However as the documentary continues we see that this in not true. We see huge fields of crops growing, and it is crazy to think that these large areas were planted all by man. It is clear that man can create something on the same level as nature. In a very symbolic scene we see a man on a tractor being engulfed by the black smoke he is creating. This is reflects the idea that we will lead to our own downfall through the pollution we are creating. The music takes a more urgent and unsettling tone as the telephone wires, and huge factories are shown. Our actions are shown as destructive, we using explosives or fire–an atomic bomb is shown. The image of a baby on a beach is juxtaposed with that of the factory looming behind the beach. To me, this expresses the idea that we are not only harming the environment with our pollution, by ourselves and most importantly our future generations.
Not all human activities were reflected with such a negative light in my mind. The huge skyscrapers or the big jet appealed to my sense of amazement at our ability, as a species, to create. The group of people taking pictures shows the kind of innovation humans generally revere. We are able to create such impressive buildings, build a method of transportation that defies gravity, mass produces cars and other objects in such quantity. Many of humanity’s most impressive accomplishments are in the military–shown by the tanks, fighter jets, and rockets. The problem is not that we are unable to take steps to save our environment, we just do not have the drive to do so. We have a tendency towards violence and self-indulgence that will only lead us to further harming ourselves.
The next images we see are the less impressive or grand elements of human creation and consumption. We are shown images of garbage littering the cit streets. Moreover, we are shown people living in this garbage, children playing in water with litter in it, parks and streetlights falling apart. Broken windows signify abandoned buildings that could be used for some other purpose. Some of the most stimulating images of the documentary for me are the falling and crashing buildings that are being destroyed. These images seem to show the less appealing nature of humans, how we not only have harmed the environment in creating these buildings and structures, but that after we build them we do not look after them properly–leading us to harm the environment even more when we take them down.
As the human race is shown in large groups in cities and such, the music speeds up. The music now is in a clear contrast to the slower, grander melody at the beginning of the movie. The film is sped up showing people and cars moving at ridiculous speeds. This was the most hypnotic part of the film as it gradually increases in speed flashing images of human consumption onto the screen. Humanity is shown to be busier, and faster than the steady images of the oceans and mountains. Humans have already managed to impose a significant amount of damage onto aspects of nature that have existed for many, many years in a relatively short period of time. We are constantly moving, constantly consuming–and through this constantly polluting our environment.
The name of this documentary, Koyaanisqatsi, is an Hopi term meaning Life Out Of Balance. I think that this term is a very apt name for this presentation, and that this theme is represented in different ways. First life is clearly out of balance with respect to nature and humanity. We are creating, and destroying at such a great speed, that nature cannot compete with our rate of consumption. In such a short amount of time we are undoing the perfect that nature took millions of years to create.
There is also a clear unbalance within humanity itself. We desire to benefit our lives and improve our condition, however we do not realize that in doing this we are in fact destroying the only place we have to live. We desire to protect our young, yet we think the best way to do this is to buy them toys, food, diapers, clothes–as much as we can–in fact we live in a society that marks success on how much you can buy. But by buying into this idea we are supporting a system that is raping our environment and natural resources. It is this system that will harm our young the most, by preventing future generations from having a safe environment to live in. Humanity is also unbalanced in the fact that we have such great technology and resources at our fingertips, yet we do not chose to use this to benefit the environment. We do not try to save the very thing we need the most.
The last fifteen or so minutes of the film show that humanity is actually fragile and so very dependent on the environment. There are slower paced images of people hurt, bleeding, and unhappy–a reminder of our mortality. It may seem that we hold the upper hand against nature; that life is unbalanced but tipped in our favor. This is not true. We are constantly at the mercy of nature. If there was any doubt of this in my mind Hurricane Sandy served to erase it. I have no electricity, no way to store fresh food, no way to heat my house, and only the limited light of a flashlight at night. Yet I am still one of the lucky ones–people living not too far from me have lost there homes, cars, or even their lives in the destruction caused by this act of nature. As our consumption, and pollution serves to upset nature, nature will only return the favor onto our own artificial and self-made world.
While this is not to become my new favorite movie, I think that I enjoyed and understood the message of this documentary than I originally thought I would. It was at times a little difficult to focus on, but the images and music were as a whole fairly stimulating and served to capture my interest. I think that is a documentary that everyone should see once, as its message will stay with the viewer long after the presentation has ended.
