Description: Miramax Home Entertainment and Oscar(R)-winning filmmaker Steven Soderbergh (Best Director, TRAFFIC, 2000) present NAQOYQATSI ("Life As War"), from filmmaker Godfrey Reggio, in collaboration with composer Phillip Glass, whose original score features renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma. In this cinematic concert -- the concluding film of the Qatsi Trilogy preceded by the critically acclaimed KOYAANISQATSI ("Life Out Of Balance"), and POWAQQATSI ("Life In Transformation") -- mesmerizing images reanimated from everyday reality, then visually altered with state-of-the-art digital techniques, chronicle the shift from a world organized by the principles of nature to one dominated by technology, the synthetic, and the virtual. Extremes of intimacy and spectacle, tragedy and hope, fuse in a tidal wave of visuals and music, giving rise to a unique artistic experience that reflects Reggio's visions of a brave new globalized world.
Amazon.com: Whether your intellect is completely engaged or passively detached, any viewing of Naqoyqatsi is likely to provoke a fascinating response. You can view it as a magnificent, visually stimulating music video (as critic Roger Ebert suggested you should), or in context as the third and most unsettling film in director Godfrey Reggio's "qatsi" trilogy, each titled from the Hopi language, and preceded by Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi ("Life out of Balance" and "Life in Transformation," respectively). "Life as War" is the translation of this film's title, and Reggio's theme is not one of conventional warfare, but of daily life as warfare in the age of rapidly evolving technology. The entire trilogy views humankind as a blight on the pristine nature of Earth, but here the theme is taken to its inevitable extreme: a constant flow of new and archival images--manipulated with solarization, digital enhancements, thermal effects, 2-D and 3-D animation, etc.--combine to convey athletic and military regimentation, culminating in the doomsday flowering of missiles, rockets, and all varieties of nuclear weaponry. The cumulative effect, when combined with Philip Glass's mesmerizing score (his best of the trilogy, with cello solos by Yo-Yo Ma) is one of doom-laden portent, but, as Stephen Holden observed in the New York Times, the film is also arrestingly beautiful as it weaves its hypnotic, apocalyptic spell. For those who wish to delve further, Reggio, Glass, and editor/visual designer Jon Kane provide valuable insight in a bonus panel discussion. --Jeff Shannon
Instantly Forgettable After seeing Koyaanisqatsi in an art house many many years ago the images & sounds re-played in my mind for days. But this latest installment is instantly forgettable.
What this film feels like is an Epcott ride; a kind of tourist's vision of the technological age, the information age, or the digital age, or all three conflated into one big amusement ride.
Postmoderns argue that we are bombarded with so much information that we no longer have the ability to make heads or tails of it, or that we simply don't have enough time to make heads or tails of it, or that we have lost the desire to make heads or tails of it. All fine arguments, all perhaps partially true (or true for some), and all perhaps leading to the feeling that we are no longer in control of our world but that our world is in control of us. Hence, the relevance of the -qatsi trilogy, a semi-mystical trinity of pictures thats intention is to produce nostalgia for a time when there was some kind of balance between man and environment. But information in the information age has a very short shelf life, as does new technology, as do new age & postmodern philosophies, as does art. And the -qatsi trilogy, too, seems dated. In the years since the original, Koyaanisqatsi, the message has changed but the films have not. The second and third films just seem like redundant copies, redundant because they do not advance or refine the original, now outdated, formulation.
New technologies are not going to go away, we marvel at them and we depend on them, and we do not want them to go away. New technologies do create problems, but they also solve many problems. Rapid transformations in the private & the public sphere tend to excite some people and frighten others. The first -qatsi film came along when many people were maybe uncertain about how they felt, because they hadn't yet had time to contemplate what all the new tech meant. Now we've had time to adapt to it and our reponses to it have grown more nuanced. The problem with the second and third qatsi films is that they have not grown more nuanced with us.
Also, new tech often impresses us and we treat it with an almost religious awe. But then the shock wears off and it becomes part of our daily lives. The first film was impressive because it was the first time that many of us saw time-lapse photography used on such a massive scale and matched with the perfect music. It produced a strong aesthetic reaction. But the aesthetic is not new anymore. Nor does it seem to be as profound.
In fact, there is very little to prevent one from reading this latest film as a celebration of our technological-information rich-digital world instead of as a critique of it. And maybe thats intentional, maybe the filmakers have changed their own minds about technology etc... and have reached new conclusions (despite the continued use of those Hopi titles).
In any event, the film is only to be recommended to those who adore time-lapse photography and Philip Glass.
Personally, I find I can cope just fine with the digital age. But this much time-lapse photography and this much Philip Glass give me a headache.
There is something better out there This ain't "Fantasia" I like--to some degree--the music of Philip Glass. (But apparently I don't like 89 minutes of it at once.) I like--to some degree--the flash of images--even the flash of discordant image--and the thoughts these images provoke. But, mostly through it, I was rooting for Mickey Mouse to appear and hungering for the triumphance of "greatest" classical hits. This won't be viewed again; "Fantasia" will.
Mayhem Mayhem, missiles, madness and bombs in high contrast black and white or supersaturated, highly tinted colour. A dark and unpleasant collage of images, not particularly imaginative, that almost left me with a headache. Occasionally visually striking, so 2 stars rather than one. But overall - disappointing.
I liked the first two better. I got real excited for this one and had my hopes up for something amazing. Its ok, and my friends gave it a less rating then I did. I do appreciate what they are trying to do with this film even though I have no idea what they are trying to do in this film:) A good conversation piece though like the rest of the series.
Gorgeous and Stunning Loved it, even though I'm still not sure what the message is!
Koyaanis was straightforward, simple and impactful. Strongest entry in the series.
Powaq was too esoteric. Unless you knew intimately what the locations, cultures, rituals and routines the film depicted were, you were missing the point, as I always have.
Naqoy returns to the subject of the USA, but I'm not sure what Reggio is saying. I expected something immediate and impactful, as Koyaanis had been, but instead I'm puzzled and feel the meaning to be very vague.
Maybe it's a matter of cracking the code. I hate to say it, but the film needs a commentary track by Reggio in which he deliniates what the images mean to him and why he chose them!
For all that, it's still a deep, beautiful, and confounding film. It certainly twists my mind around, but in a way too ineffable to understand.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Tony's Online Tips
Trevor
