I was expecting something quite different when I began this film. I expected an extensive documentary which sent out to investigate a problem, interviewed regular people as well as representatives of business and government. I expected each point to be concise but well-developed, and to lead together into a decisive closing statement. Instead I saw a poetic vision of the natural earth, of human industry and its excesses. The film was about images and emotions, accentuated by continuous music, rather than ideas, statistics and solutions. It takes the positives and negatives of human influence and organizes them into three dichotomies: natural beauty and human decay, the greatness of human achievement and the fear of human destructive power, and productivity and consumerism. In this way it engages us emotionally in an easy to understand and thought-provoking manner.
The main portion of the film opens upon beautiful landscapes which appear to be from the American southwest. These locales are open and clear and probably more beautiful than any place I’ve yet seen, and seem almost entirely free from human intervention. Our point of view drops down immense caverns, past towering rock spires, and eventually switches to scenes of untouched mountain ranges as clouds flow over and around them. This segment serves to introduce the beauty of the earth free from human exploitation, and what is and will continue to be lost every day as development continues.
Next, the scene shifts, accompanied by ominous music, producing the second half of the first dichotomy. The setting still appears to be somewhere in the southwest, but humans have left their mark. Industrial complexes surrounded by chemical-filled pools (very reminiscent of those set up by Mobil’s near Arthur Kill). Later we see scenes of abandoned buildings, of poor neighborhoods and poverty. Throughout the film there are scenes of the negative aspects of urban life, with the high summer heat, the crowds, and the congestion. Each of these contributes to the next stage of emotional engagement. Similar to the “problem phase” of MHC 200’s arc, these scenes show us some of our largest mistakes. Industry creates and motivates, but not all of its creations are positive. With production comes waste (barring green engineering) inequality. We’ve built ghettos alongside our financial centers, and waste holding sites along our power suppliers.
Scattered throughout the film are scenes of human achievement and destruction. We create our own hills and mountains in high-rises and skyscrapers, and our own streams and rivers in roads and highway complexes. The film shows us the beauty of these creations, with blue sky and clouds reflecting off the mirrored side of a business building. Later we get bird’s-eye views of the city a night, which, at least to me, are nearly as beautiful as the wonders of the southwest we saw earlier. Still later we see images of highways as cars move about them like red blood cells in an artery. When the camera’s viewpoint accelerates, moving us faster and faster through the streets at night, the neon lights blend together like something from a science fiction movie. In my interpretation, these scenes show the strength and glory of human creations.
They are countered by our ability to destroy. Throughout the film, we see visions of destruction along with our visions of creation. When I see an aircraft carrier with the equation “E = mc2” emblazoned on its deck, I think immediately of the nuclear reactor deep within. At a different point in the film, we see that energy directed purely for destructive purposes: an atomic bomb detonates. Other scenes of destruction haunt us throughout the film. We see military vehicles repeatedly, along with ICBM launches, fighter jet rockets exploding, and other, unexplained explosions. At one point the afore-mentioned scenes of poverty collide with destruction: the demolition of a whole series of decrepit high rises happens before our eyes. Along with the power to create comes our power to destroy. It is awe-inspiring, but also frightening and worrisome. It’s importance must also be understood in the context of the cold war, when this film was made. The growth of our productive forces led directly to our ability to destroy, and exists as a constant threat both to us and the environment. Explosives that don’t detonate can act as mines in the ground for decades. Chemicals within them, as well as weaponry like depleted Uranium rounds, contaminate the environment and create a large risk of birth defects. Nuclear war, more of a threat in the 1980s than today, poses the ultimate risk of a nuclear winter.
The third dichotomy relates to productivity and consumption. On the one hand, Koyaanisqatsi gives us several looks inside the productive and financial centers of our nation. We see assembly lines creating cars and stock markets where new companies find capital. Cars and businesses both create great wealth and productivity in our society, but neither of these things, so well-loved in America, are without their drawbacks. Each is an icon of our current way of living, of individualism, prosperity, and success – but also of consumption and greed. The film proposes a balance with these institutions, but the balance is shifted when we see what many other factories produce. The film focuses in on a hotdog factory and a Twinkie factory, examples of low-quality, unhealthy food. From there the scene brings us to food courts and shopping malls, places of conspicuous consumption and waste. The film seems to linger here with this idea of wasted potential. It shows us the immense infrastructure we have built that is capable of creating marvels, but is instead oriented towards trivial pleasures. We have mined and built upon great swaths of the earth, but largely not for any important reason – just to consume more and more.
The film ends with an explanation both of the title and of the Hopi words sung throughout. Koyaanisqatsi means “life out of balance”, which cannot be maintained. This is clearly evident, both from the film and from myriad other expert sources on the environment. The first prophecy, which says, “if we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster,” seems at first glance to be the naïve saying of a pre-metallurgic society. While the Hopi of the past couldn’t have known what environmental problems we of the present face, I can only think of how appropriate the prophecy is in the light of coal mining and oil drilling. These industries have invited disaster in numerous ways, both in terms of toxic chemical release, environmental disruption, and the ultimate threat of global warming. The second prophecy, “near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky,” is less transparent, but these “cobwebs” could certainly be interpreted as carbon dioxide and the any other gases and particulate matter we have released into the atmosphere. The third prophecy, “a container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans,” seems almost prescient in the light of global warming. We have placed those chemicals in the sky, and they do threaten to desertify our land, to melt our icecaps, to destroy our ozone layer, to acidify our ocean and to raise temperatures everywhere.
The first and last scenes of the film are of a rocket taking off. The rocket, built by human ingenuity and manpower, lifts powerfully into the air, soaring off into the heavens. It is finally on the verge of escape from this planet when it explodes. One interpretation of this image is quite dark. We have come too far on ancient sunlight, and altered the environment too much – the only thing left is to wait for our hubris to consume us, like Icarus flying too close to the sun on waxen wings. But there is a second interpretation: Only that we can’t run away from the problems we’ve created, that we need to face the challenges before us. The second interpretation seems true for now, but the challenges we face grow more dire every day.
This seems to be the overarching theme of the film: we need to make the right choices. We as humans have so many capabilities: we can change the world, or we can leave it be. We can create beauty or we can create destruction. We can direct our industry towards meeting the challenges we face, or we can continue to produce only the purpose of consumption. Until we make the right choices, life will remain “out of balance,” and we will continue to put ourselves and our society at risk.
