KOYAANISQATSI! When trying to fall asleep an hour after I finished watching this bizarre movie, all I could hear in my head was “KOYAANISQATSI” in that slow, robotic voice. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but what I do know is that I did not enjoy this unique movie. Although there were several intriguing and symbolic moments, it was just not my cup of tea. However, I did see some value in this movie in the way it portrayed the world and left it open to interpretation.
Before starting this movie, I knew nothing about it. All I had heard was that someone had said in class that it was something like the show Planet Earth. It turned out to be very different from what I was expecting as the movie consisted solely of slow, panoramic views of random sights ranging from the Grand Canyon to car and pedestrian traffic without any voiceovers. I assume the background music was supposed to be soothing, but I found it rather irritating. Perhaps I was just not in the proper mood to watch the movie. I feel like it would make for a better watch in the wee hours of the early morning.
The movie started and ended on the same note with a rocket being launched. I guess this showed how far we have come as a human race in that we are able to launch rockets into outer space. However, we still have so much more to go as we have barely begun to explore space. There is still so much more room for technological advancement, and hopefully we are on the brink of breakthrough.
The biggest message I took from the movie is how we are small, helpless, and insignificant parts of the world. It is almost comedic the way we drive our cars around, listening to traffic lights, having no way to get to where we want to go faster. We just accept having to stop and follow all the rules of the world without questioning them, like stopping when the light turns red.
There were many beautiful sites shown in the movie. The Grand Canyon is a beautiful place where I would like to visit someday. It seems like it would be extremely relaxing there. At one point in the movie, there was an astounding field of many different colored flowers. It was an extravagant array ranging from pink to green that reminded me of candy, however it was still a site unmatched by anything I have ever seen.
My favorite site in the movie was a skyscraper that was shown along with dozens of tourists admiring it. The sides of the building were glass, so it reflected all sorts of light and images off of it. The way the sun reflected off the glass was a remarkable sight. I believe the tourists were well warranted in admiring the spectacular, once in a lifetime view.
I was very confused when there was an airplane on the screen for several minutes. The pilot was nowhere in sight. The airplane was moving and you can see into the cockpit, but there was no one there. This was alarming because a moving plane should have someone flying it.
I immediately noticed the incinerators when they were shown because of the giant chimneys. These incinerators are an example of a necessary but unfortunate part of our world. We need a way to dispose of our waste and there are no better current alternatives. The sight of these incinerators reminded me of our need to find better ways for waste disposal. Going along with items relevant to our class, there was a landfill featured in the film. I was able to see the massive mounds where garbage would be dumped and was able to tell the landfill stretched for many acres. Landfills and incinerators are currently our best two options for waste disposal, but personally, I advocate incinerators over landfills. I believe landfills waste too much land and incinerators are getting better at filtering and limiting the toxins emitted into the air. The movie also showed a lot of oil drilling. Once again, the movie was showing a finite resource that we rely on to live our lives, so we need to find alternatives for it. Oil drilling has many consequences including destroying the icecaps, endangering Arctic wildlife, and maybe most importantly affecting decision making at the higher level because everything always comes down to money. We need to be careful when it comes to oil drilling.
At one point in the movie, a passed-out homeless gentleman was put on a stretcher and taken to the hospital in an ambulance. This reminded me of the internship I am doing now. I am a research assistant in the Emergency Department at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, so I see intoxicated patients come in all the time. The emergency room staff hates dealing with them because most of them come in frequently and act obnoxiously and are harmful to themselves and others. I witnessed one intoxicated patient bite an emergency room physician as well a different intoxicated patient slap an EMT. Many times, the staff is forced to sedate these patients, as they are an inconvenience to the employees as well as other patients. It is a shame and we need to work better to improve unemployment and get help for people suffering from mental problems and other disadvantages.
Something that I thought was symbolic was the buildings collapsing or being demolished. I thought that this was saying that we need to keep advancing and making progress or we are going to crumble like those buildings. The sight of those buildings falling was tough to watch and the amount of ash and dirt released into the air when these buildings collapse is disgusting.
The outdoor elevators on some of the buildings really captured my attention. The elevators were outside at each corner of the buildings, and they reminded me of the wonkavators from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I think buildings in Manhattan should make elevators like that as they would transform a normally boring experience into a fun one.
The movie showed a full moon bigger than any moon I have ever seen before. Strange things tend to happen under a full moon and according to the messages at the end, I have many strange thoughts on the movie. The title is very fitting as it translates to life out of balance or crazy life. I like the way the movie reveals these translations at the end. It makes sense as the movie shows random scenes of beautiful, natural sites like the Grand Canyon as well as damaging, manmade sites such as oil drilling. This is a great example of how life is out of balance. A translation for the Hopi Prophecies sung during the film is, “If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster.” This is what we have been learning in our class as messing with the equilibrium always has bad consequences. It would be better to harness natural energy, specifically solar energy to fuel our society instead of finite resources like oil, which we must remove from the land.
