Harhaluulo54 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.

classicsoncall 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.

suite92 Videos strung together, coordinated with Phillip Glass' music. Nature (clouds, waves, mountains, shores) is described as beautiful, enduring, good. Humanity is ambushed as ugly, stupid, wasteful, enslaved, impoverished, ant-like, and injurious to the landscape.Cinematography: 5/10 I saw this in the late 1980s, and remember being quite impressed by the visuals. On the Hulu version I saw in 2013, I was not impressed at all. The focus was soft, the colors washed out, the contrast low. Incidental music: 5/10 Beyond irritating. When associated with humans in video, the music had the sort of manic activity one might associate with the Keystone Cops, but with oppressive overtones. Screenplay: 2/10 The point of view is 'nature is great, humanity is the opposite.'

Gross Ryder Pleasant and haunting at the same time, the powerful combination of music synchronized with visuals and the chant at the beginning makes the film an experience that could well induce a trance in sensitive, intuitive people that can lead to a realization that Time is not linear in an absolute sense, and that the 'experience' of Time is multi dimensional – even leading to an experience of timelessness or Eternity.The film has universal symbolism about the contrast between raw, primordial nature that symbolizes the beginning of time for all practical purposes (creation), and technology –that seemingly speeds up time as it approaches the end point of all technology – which is destruction. I am surprised that no one mentions that it symbolizes Time Fractals (concept developed by Terence Kenna- the process of the ever increasing rate of change of events in temporal reality culminating in the Eschaton ) and thereby gives us an inkling of the counter-concept of Time/Temporal Reality - and that is: Eternity ( in which both the concepts of change and static fail to apply).Incidentally, Mckenna developed the Time Fractals concept and the theory from the study of 'I Ching', but also co-related it with the Native American/ Meso-American concept of Circular Time in the process of the cycles of Creation-Destruction.Eternity is not an infinitely long period of linear time, and therefore eternity cannot be conceived by reason, only fleetingly felt or glimpsed in intuitive, synthesis experience. Linear time is conceived by rational thought working on memory, that then extrapolates its generalizations to extend this conceived linearity which is appropriately limited only to one's lifetime and therefore it is a misconception to generalize it beyond the memory, beyond the personal experiences and the History of mankind.This does not mean that linear time is a total misconception. It is only in linear time (can also be called objective time) that the synchronization of all the living, sentient beings of a world and (by extension) of the universe can possibly take place. The point here is that to make a 'leap of logic' to extend the validity of linear time indefinitely to the past and the future is fallacious and misleading. Even logically it is inconceivable that time extends infinitely backwards into the past – it brings up absurdities and paradoxes that cannot be cannot be resolved if we stick to a fixed conception of linear time that can be extended indefinitely into the past or future.One way of resolving this absurdity and paradox is to conceive of time as the rate of change of events taking place in the physical world, rather than stubbornly stick only to the notion of 'objective time as recorded by a clock' (a notion that has been 'hard programmed' into us by the standard science based educational system). Secondly, when we are in a synthesis, intuitive or imaginative mode of experience, these fixed notions of linear time are necessarily suspended for this mode of experience to be of any significance.