Koyaanisqatsi and Naqoyqatsi left me both
confused and intrigued. I quickly wondered how Godfrey Reggio had come up with
the idea of filming the Qatsi trilogy. Was the director just talented at hiding
his agenda? Or did he have the ideal of creating art for art’s sake in mind?
These questions led me to look up interviews of Reggio in an attempt to
understand his motivations.
I found an
interview of Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass on the making of the Qatsi films.
The director provides an insight into the purpose he tried to give to his
trilogy.
Right away,
Godfrey Reggio states: “These films are meant to provoke, they are meant to
offer an experience rather than an idea or information or a story about
knowable or fictional subject.” The director explains that the viewer has to
extract his or her own meaning from the film. The Qatsi documentaries seek not
to spark off a particular emotion but rather to allow the spectator to make
sense of the images for herself.
Reggio also
explains his will to go “beyond words” by his years of meditation in a
religious community. He attempted to create an experience that would make the
spectator see through the “surface of things”. Godfrey Reggio explains that
today, people who live in this world do not see the main event that it hides.
He believes the most important event of human history is currently unfolding:
the passage from life among nature to life in a “technological milieu”. The
director says that we no longer live with technology but are now living in
technology. He seeks to make his viewer question his current lifestyle in order
to assert this claim. In Koyaanisqatsi, a city is compared to a computer
chip; traffic is filmed and accelerated.
When I first
viewed Koyaanisqatsi and Naqoyqatsi, I was frustrated in my
attempt to understand what Godfrey Reggio sought to show his viewers. This
video about the making of the trilogy has answered my question. I found it
almost more interesting than the documentaries themselves, perhaps because
Reggio’s claims are explicitly expressed. I strongly recommend watching the
whole interview if you were confused by the Qatsi films.
I'm really glad you posted that video of the interview and talked about because I had a lot of the same questions that you did. I now somewhat understand why he made the film the way he did and that's just the style that he was trying to go for...even though it doesn't agree with some people.
ReplyDeleteThis goes to show the weakness of the film. If I watch the movie, and I have to go and do homework to understand it, then the film has utterly failed. Research of a film should enhance your understanding of it, but the film needs to provide some basis of comprehension.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate that you posted this interview. I completely agree with you that Reggio's commentary is arguably more interesting than the films themselves. I too was frustrated, and the interview cleared some things up for me.
ReplyDelete