William Arguelles
Spiro Alexandratos
Seminar 3
October 25, 2012
Koyaanisquatsi Paper
I’m going to say this right up front: I did not like this movie. I really did not enjoy the vast majority of the film. I had significant trouble with almost every element of the film, from the “agenda” or “goal” of the piece to its horrible execution and accidentally tragic ending. I’m trying to stay as impartial as possible from this point on, and give you exact reasons for why I disliked the film, but I don’t know how feasible of a goal that is. In truth, there’s very little I enjoyed about Koyaanisquatsi, and almost none of it is what I think you’ve enjoyed about the movie. But enough exposition let me get down to the brass tacks.
I think the first thing I need to say is that the ending probably soured the whole movie for me in retrospect, even though it’s not the movie’s fault. Let me explain. One of the ending scenes is of a rocket launching into the sky and exploding, then a single piece that looked like a recovery pod falling back to earth as some Hopi chant plays in the background. My immediately thought that the shot was of the Challenger explosion, and I actually had to stop the movie and check that they weren’t that callous to use such a horrible tragedy for such a petty ending. Of course, I learned they didn’t and the Challenger explosion didn’t actually happen until 4 years later, but emotionally, the damage was done and I’d lost my last bit of respect for the movie. In retrospect, I can’t say why I equated the scene with the Challenger exactly. I think it was because of the falling piece looking similar to the falling crew compartment of the Challenger and that the rocket exploded in a nearly identical plum of smoke, but I’m not sure. I know objectively that this is not a valid reason to dislike the movie, but emotionally it is my strongest criticism of the movie and probably the reason I utterly couldn’t stand to watch another second of it.
Now having fully established that my opinion is biased and wholly untrustworthy because of misremembering of the video of the Challenger disaster that tainted my complete emotional feel of the movie, I’ll try to find actual reasons why I disliked Koyaanisquatsi. Perhaps on a basic level, I just honestly was not emotionally engaged by the movie until that “horrible” rocket scene. I found parts intriguing and others interesting, but nothing really wowed me until I was screaming at the movie near the end. I watched Koyaanisquatsi on Hulu, so commercials popped up every fifteen or so minutes. What is significant about that is that because ads are specifically designed to engage the consumer on some level, I found them much more memorable and interesting than the movie. Which boggles my mind, because I’ve never found commercials engaging before, despite the ads trying so hard.
Part of this dilemma was because Koyaanisquatsi lacked any real narration or plot. There’s a theory in English and Psychology called Narrative Bias that accounts for my biggest problem with this movie. Basically, Narrative Bias is the theory that our minds are pre-programmed to only retain information if it tells us a story in a clear arc. This movie, because it lacks a clear story, is less a movie then a fractured amalgamation of scenes strung together. That’s not to say that the segments weren’t visually stunning. I think individually, each of the segments could of worked as modern art or art house cinematography. But because this is labeled a “film” or a “movie,” I am going in with the preconceived bias that there will be a clear story-arc, and when there isn’t I feel betrayed. I’m not saying that it’s a fair assumption to make, but it is a very common and very basic assumption most people make about movies.
Adding fuel to the fire, another issue that I had with the movie was the soundtrack. This movie has practically no narration, which means the soundtrack of the film has to take the place of telling the story and setting the tone. Of course, the soundtrack to this movie would be done by probably my least favorite composer of all time, Phillip Glass. While this wasn’t the cacophonous monstrosity I’ve come to expect upon hearing that dreaded name, it didn’t add anything to the film, and in fact damaged it because it failed to take the place of the missing narration. The soundtrack sounded very similar and repetitious the whole time, causing it to blur the movie into a meaningless mass of random images, which just further worked against the narrative bias I had going in to this film. I found this most apparent during the beginning shots of the canyons. Because Glass’s music is both grating and monotonous, I couldn’t appreciate the beauty of the canyons. I think this is because mentally I associate quietness and serenity with nature, not strident caterwauling and irksome howling. I know objectively this is my bias seeping through, but to me, the soundtrack is just another nail in the coffin of this lifeless film.
In fact, Glass’s masterfully done music prevented me from appreciating the truly stunning visuals to such a degree, that half way through the movie I muted the film and found myself actually started to enjoy the film. I absolutely loved several of the shots of the machinery and technology because they were just so visually stunning and impressive, and carried individually so much meaning. Two of my favorite scenes and the best transition of the film happened at about the twenty-eight minute mark. We’re treated to this fly-by shot of a lot filled with multicolored cars, where the camera initially zooms in on one of the cars and then slowly zooms out while panning up towards the heavens, slowly revealing the army of brilliant cars, dazzling in their Technicolor beauty in the sun. Then the film cuts sharply to an older seemingly World War II era newsreel with the camera zipping by these rows of perfectly aligned tanks, slowly panning down from the heavens back to reality. It’s really impressive editing and cinematography, and if it were a standalone exhibit at something like MoMA, without any sound just the visuals, I’d be singing the praises up and down of the scenes. It’s a beautiful artistic critique of the industrial production system and of the human need for order. The shot of the cars are beautiful and colorful and so incredibly vivid, yet they’re paralleled by the antiquated and monotone visual of the tanks in similar lines heading off to war. The juxtaposition seemingly implies that the cars are equivalent to tanks, that our industrial production of both these terrifying war machines and wondrous vehicles is really just the same monster. We may not view the cars as damaging or as dangerous as the tanks, because of their presentation and how they’re elevated in our view, but when viewed from an equal level they both can be used for incredible destruction.
And then there is the fact that all the cars and tanks are neatly aligned, fitting into perfect squares, is reminiscent of man’s struggle to make sense of a senseless world. What I find striking about the organization of the car scene is that the cars themselves have no discernable pattern to their placement, yet they are shaped into perfectly ordered rows and columns. It’s like someone was trying to impose order onto them, to make sense of this plethora of random cars. But because there’s no reasoning to the organization, the cars appear to be chaotically placed, only ordered in name but not in reality. Which to me is symbolic of man trying to understand the world by imposing his order onto it. That just like the organization of the cars, we might not truly be ordering anything in any meaningful way. But because we need some kind of order on a basic instinctual level, we continuously search for a way to shape the world into something we can understand and comprehend. That when we see this shot of the cars from above, we instinctually recognize that they’re in a specific order, therefore there has to be some meaning to it. When in reality, the cars are just parked lined up in the lot randomly, with no real reasoning to why it exists.
This little three minute section is just a snippet of the visual wonder and storytelling Koyaanisquatsi could tell if it wasn’t this continuous mess. Individual segments of the film are so interesting and intriguing, but they get lost in the horrific screeching sounds and the just overload of imagery. Since there’s not a readily apparent plot to the film, yet it’s all forcibly tied together by the nightmarish soundtrack, it comes across as these chaotic flashes of brilliance and confusion all tied into one disjointed package. Maybe it’s the music, maybe it’s the organization, but I didn’t really feel there was anything unifying to the entire film, no underpinning to the movie that had it make sense.
I think it was supposed to be about the world being out of order, given that the translation of the title literally means “unbalanced life” but I feel like it did a terrible job if that was the goal. Maybe because I’ve grown up in a very urbanized area, I didn’t find most of the images unnatural or unbalanced. I mean I do come from the suburbs, but the suburbs are a merger of city and rural, which is what I thought of most of the images, such as the shots of the electrical wires in the desert. Sure, it’s no longer completely natural, but there’s a balance and a beauty to the imagery of the geometric wire towers against the endless orange sea. And the shots of the city under the overcast sky just struck me as an incredibly shady and cool day, which is pretty much my favorite kind of weather. I understand that the clouds are supposed to be symbolic of the trouble looming over the city from not dealing with the environmental problems, but emotionally that’s not how I read it.
Perhaps the most emblematic image of this problem happens at 39:56. If you freeze the frame, you get this picture of the Microdata glass paneled building with the blue sky and white clouds reflected onto it. If it weren’t for the iron support beams and the name of the company in the top left, the building would appear to be a seamless merger of sky and building. If the message is that the world is out of order, why show an image of modern technology seemingly blending in and almost fusing with nature? It just looks so natural and so balanced, that I don’t understand the intent behind the shot. It seems to imply that we do exist in balance, that the world does make sense.
So in my obviously expert opinion, Koyaanisquatsi fails on a few critical levels. As a film, it lacks any coherent plot line or a single thread that runs consistently through it. If you take Koyaanisquatsi as a piece of propaganda for environmentalism, that the world is out of order and we must fix it, the movie falls short in several key parts which seem to almost glorify cities as natural elements. If Koyaanisquatsi is artistic cinema, it’s too long and chaotic to be a single piece of art and isn’t presented as a set of disjointed segments due to the movie format. So if it’s none of these things by my estimation, then what exactly is it supposed to be? I honestly don’t have an answer for that question.
