The simplicity of Godfrey Reggio’s new film,
“Naqoyqatsi,” is drenched with complexity. The film is
easy to understand, but the ideas behind it are overwhelming.
“If you’re simple-minded, life is either this or
that, black and white, good or bad, America or Iraq,” Reggio
said after the film’s L.A. premiere at the Egyptian Theater
Friday night. “Life is much more complex than that. Life is
usually this AND that. This film is about something that is this
AND that.”
Reggio’s comment came after the definitive question,
“How can a film be critical of technology when its very
creation required the said technology?” The answer is both
simple and complex.
The wordless documentary is composed of mostly stock images
(mushroom clouds, athletes in exertion, glossy commercials) that
are manipulated, making them seem pale, washed-out and dead. Unlike
Reggio’s previous two films in the “Qatsi”
documentary trilogy, “Koyaanisqatsi” (Hopi for
“life out of balance”) and “Powaqqatsi”
(“life in transformation”), the new film
“Naqoyqatsi” (“life as war”) is less a
celebration of life than an elegy for the future. It is a critique
of technology that Reggio makes with clarity.
“From the point of view of these films, technology is no
longer something we use,” Reggio said. “Technology is
something we live. We breathe it. It’s as ubiquitous as the
air that surrounds us.”
As an example, Reggio tells the audience to go take a drive down
Sunset Boulevard.
“The total spectacularization of images as commodities is
there for all to see,” Reggio said. “But we don’t
even see them. They’re part of the wallpaper now.”
Reggio’s tactic is to create wallpaper that critiques the
wallpaper. The most insightful image of the film is an attractive
woman smiling while holding a hamburger close to her mouth. She
never stops smiling but hesitates to bite the sandwich, generating
an uneasy laugh. Anyone who’s had fast food can feel her
pain. The glossy commercial image critiques glossy commercial
images.
Comparably, the film is enjoyable as a collection of beautiful
images. A case in point is the fractals that dive into fractals
within fractals of rainbow colors. It’s hard to hate
technology when you’re so enamored and hypnotized. The
audience is not only smiling but also biting into what Reggio terms
an “unspeakable tragedy.”
Composer Philip Glass creates perhaps his best score since
“Koyaanisqatsi,” his first film score. Reggio virtually
discovered Glass, who, before composing for
“Koyaanisqatsi,” drove a taxi and was regarded as the
minimalist master of the broken record needle. Glass enlists Yo-Yo
Ma for the cello solos that sound part Bach, part mystical new age.
The musical language works so well with the nonlinear images that
each one seems to stem from the other. Reggio and Glass are no
longer the filmmaking newcomers they were when they started in
1975.
What is new, however, is the glamour the films have. The new
film is produced by Steven Soderbergh and released by Miramax, in
time for the release of the other “Qatsi” films on DVD.
After the screening, a small mob gathered around Reggio with DVD
covers in hand for autographs, suggesting mass-media magnitude and
celebrity status. Reggio turned no one away. It was an
“and” moment.
Reggio’s newfound guru status among film lovers gives him
room to preach, but not too much ego that he can’t realize
his own esotericism.
“Technology is new nature,” Reggio said in prophetic
tones. Yet he stepped back with, “Please, I’m not
suggesting that you have to think that way. Certainly, most of my
crew members don’t even think about these things, to tell you
the truth. But someone has to be a little off-center and think this
way to keep the project going, so it’s my job to keep that
fire alive.”
For more info visit www.qatsi.com. “Naqoyqatsi”
plays through Thursday at Hollywood’s Egyptian Theater.