In 1983 Godfcey Reggio filmed Koyaanisquatsi. The title is translated as crazy life, life in turmoil, or state that calls for another way of living. The movie is an artistic expression of the destruction of the world by man. Reggio argues that man has destroyed the beauty and wonder of the earth with our machines and factories that have polluted the atmosphere.
One of the translations for Koyaanisquatsi is state that calls for another way of living. We humans have been hard on our Earth. The pollution is great and growing, even in the 1980’s this was a problem that Reggio was addressing. There needed to be a change in the way humans were abusing the atmosphere, and this artistic film brought awareness to this fact and it did so by using only one word. One of the things that sets humans apart from primates is language. Though use of almost no language at all, Reggio was able to display a vivid argument for the need of change concerning the way the environment was being treated.
The movie starts off showing a cave painting of primitive man. It proceeds to show numerous pictures of nature. One of the first pictures is of the challenger, something we don’t learn until the last scene of the film. The first time the challenger is shown, the picture does not allow the viewer to know what the image is. At the very end of the film the shot frame is widened and the rocket is revealed, then it explodes. The scene is intense, it shows that all the technologies man has can still amount to nothing. The complication of a simple thing such as nature, is something to not destroy by harmful inventions of man.
After the nature shots it shows picture of man made factories and other such machinery that has contributed to the destruction of the Earth. There is nothing spoken in this film. The whole film gets its argument across simply by way of showing the contrasting pictures between nature and destructive man made things. The man made images are representational of the defamiliarization we humans are having with nature in present day times. Nature has seemed to be less cared for as technology persists in its development. The film also makes a point about how nature is peaceful in its untouched state by way of music. When picture were shown that involved man the music was tense and the tempo was increased, when picture were shown of nature the music was slower and more rhythmic.
No comments:
Post a Comment