| While the concert by musician and composer Philip Glass earlier this month has music aficionados racing to record stores, Glass’s work in the movies should not be forgotten.
Along with his score for the film The Hours (in theatres this week), Glass is renowned for his music in Godfrey Reggio’s "Qatsi" trilogy, two episodes of which are now available on DVD. Featuring 1982’s Koyaanisqatsi, 1987’s Powaqqatsi and the forthcoming Naqoyqatsi, the trilogy is a smorgasbord of sounds and imagery.
In the Hopi language, the term "Qatsi" means life, and "Koyaanisqatsi" translates as its imbalance. Reggio’s film is more a commentary on the state of the world than a prophecy of things to come.
Beginning with life’s four elements, Koyaanisqatsi reels us in with nature’s splendour, in a rather intimate meditation with Glass’s repetitious score. Introducing nuclear power plants and the industrial worlds of automobiles, aircrafts and military weaponry, the pollution of nature quickly rises to the surface.
Each aria of the film is dominated by the electro-synthesized music that permeated Glass’s work in the ’80s. Glass was first trained in mathematics and his patterned rhythms are more than evident here, with little use of percussion. Despite the electro sound, the music dances well with Reggio’s visuals, particularly as technology takes precedence as the film’s main character. Each line, curve or imprint created by nature in the film’s beginning moves closer towards man-made grids, circuitry and mathematical formulas by the end.
Glass’s arias tend to build to a frantic pace, and this is matched visually in an endless explosion of debris. A metaphor for life’s cyclical return to nature and our continuous efforts to destroy it, Koyaanisqatsi’s message is decidedly reverent and foreboding in trajectory, sound and scope.
Glass more than makes up for his fascination with synthesizers in Reggio’s second instalment, Powaqqatsi, which is a Hopi word meaning "life in transition." Here, Glass’s music is far more integral to the collaborations, with instrumental, percussive and global sounds.
Reggio’s visuals grow equally, particularly in geography. Unlike Koyaanisqatsi, which tends to hover over the Americas, Powaqqatsi takes us to the farther reaches of the planet and back. The score is considerably more slowly placed, as is the film’s editing, to portray a developing world. Here, individuals cultivate the land rather than build on it – at least, until technology once again takes over.
While Koyaanisqatsi begins with nature, Powaqqatsi begins with man, in ritualistic tradition. Travelling through countries such as India, Egypt, Peru, China and Israel, Glass’s intentions for music as an instrument of social change are deeper and more epic than before, with the same patterned movement.
The second half of Powaqqatsi is a commentary on urban development, and once again, the pace eventually picks up, suspending innocents in a flux of technology. As with Koyaanisqatsi, there is a heavy-handedness to the film, although Powaqqatsi certainly digs deeper into a more hopeful side of humanity.
Perhaps the most powerful images in both of Reggio’s films are individuals themselves, each very much aware of the presence of the camera. Silent and vulnerable, they are fascinating to watch in their ‘natural habitats.’ Reggio sticks to well-framed, distinct scenes, rather than sweeping, geographic transitions. As Reggio says in the DVD’s featurette, the work evokes "the hour of death," when a soul hovers over the world it has left behind.
Although it took 15 years to get backing for Reggio’s Naqoyqatsi, the third instalment of the series – "life as war" – will hopefully hit Calgary cinemas soon. Produced by Steven Soderbergh, the much-anticipated film is bursting with technology and war. As Glass mentioned at his concert last week, Reggio’s films tend to take a while to circulate. |
