Watch Koyaanisqatsi For Free

Perfect cast and a good story

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

How exactly would this thing be any different if it was just a collection of random stock footage edited to run on loop? This is meant to be a rhetoric question, but let me answer anyway: in no way whatsoever. Koyaanisqatsi is a pretentious film that has nothing to say. It's aimed for people who overanalyze everything and use their own imagination to find some hidden meanings that are not there. Was the cellar door truly red because the color red symbolizes "anger"? Or was it red because the person who happened to paint it 50 years ago had some extra paint left from another project that they just wanted to use to save some money? Perhaps this film manages to rise some thoughts in some people who "want" this film to be something special and deep, but those who are ready to take it for what it objectively is: I'd rather recommend going to youtube and let it generate a playlist based to the words "old army stuff" and "suffering nature" and you are very likely to get hits that have more to say than this specific piece of film.

Godfrey Reggio tells viewers to take what they want from the trilogy of which Koyaanisqatsi (life out of balance) is the first part. Which is a little disingenuous.In 1982, industrialisation's effects on the environment were not the big news they are today. There were no camera drones, either, so getting spectacular aerial footage of the planet, whether of deserts or industrial landscapes was a more ambitious undertaking. If you watch it with the sound off, you see many now-commonplace variations of spectacular photography, time-lapse footage and slo-mo footage; cuts much longer than we're used to today, of all kinds of (all-American) beautiful landscapes and less beautiful cityscapes. The general message, ie that humankind isn't such a beautiful thing, isn't hard to discern.Now listen to the Philip Glass soundtrack without the visuals. Portentous, meandering, it never stays in one groove long enough to suggest that it's anything but background, ambient music. George Gershwin it ain't.Put them together, and you still don't feel anything but a mild approval for the vague message, and mild admiration for the hard work that must have gone into the editing, if nothing else. In 1982, Koyaanisqatsi was kind of left-field. Today it's left behind.

I actually learned about this film from reading a review of some quite different movie right here on IMDb and have been on the lookout for it ever since. A search through my library system produced no results, so seeing it come up on the TCM cable listing the other night I managed to DVR it for watching this morning. I had to laugh actually, because the guest host for the viewing was actor Alec Baldwin. What better choice for this odd sounding film, the name of which is derived from the Hopi Indian language which loosely translates as 'life out of balance'. Off the top of my head I can't think of many other hosts who's own life may be out of balance enough to perform the duty. Just recall that phone call rant to his daughter that went viral some years ago and you'll make the connection.This film won't be for everyone's taste, that I'll grant. It's a wordless picture relying on an abundant sequence of images meant to convey both the dichotomy and interconnection between Man and Nature. Some will see it as an indictment on Mankind, thrust into a pristine world and polluting it by his mere presence. I don't see it in that harsh regard, though some of the images are indeed stark and troubling.Part of the film's strength involves the power and majesty of Nature's elemental forces juxtaposed with scenes of harmonic tranquility. It begins in a sense, from the beginning, with images from areas of the country resembling Utah's Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon, looking almost prehistoric in nature. A reverential musical score from Philip Glass lends support to the ethereal beauty of the images on screen, so it's all the more jarring when Man's machines and structures make their first intrusion on this glorious landscape. The rubble of Man's failures are highlighted in images of abandoned ghettos and ruined neighborhoods, but the film narrative successfully moves on to reveal the immense creativity and excitement of his creations. City life teems with extraordinary energy, especially at night with vibrant time lapse photography that captures the vitality of humanity.With a keen eye and superb editing, the film makers make a humorous visual statement with a cleverly placed theater marquee above a bustling city street that offers it's own critique of harried modern life - 'Grand Illusion'. Another clever contrast is made between a bank of escalators moving at a rapid pace, disgorging thousands into a grand terminal, while the next sequence involves an Oscar Mayer assembly line furiously producing hot dogs for the masses. The point is well made, life is indeed too fast and one must stop to smell the roses if any sense is to be made of one's existence at all. This I think is where the grand vision of the project is intended to lead us, to make us stop and think, and maybe think about stopping to enjoy the wondrous beauty of the world around us.

I first saw this movie when it opened in the theaters, I was blown away by it. The juxtaposition of nature with our human environment and suggesting gently that ours is out of balance, leaves little doubt. But this is for people with more than a little ability at self examination. Without it, the movie makes little sense at all.Now many years later the images remain, stuck in my memory and while this makes a re-viewing of it less than ideal, the message remains. Sadly our human environment has not gotten better, it is worse. Man's inhumanity towards our fellow man has gone to the point where the examples offered by this film pale in comparison. So as a warning it failed.