Koyaanisqatsi

    Koyaanisqatsi
    1983

    Synopsis

    Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.

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    Recommendations

    • 100

      Slant Magazine

      Koyaanisqatsi is enraged with modern societal convention, but still expresses awe of the spontaneous, incidental poetry that can exist despite invisible oppression.
    • 83

      The A.V. Club

      Reggio has a flair for iconography, and whatever external baggage Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi may carry, they should be admired for their vivid, astonishing illustrations of humanity consuming itself in clouds of its own smoke and debris.
    • 80

      TV Guide Magazine

      Koyaanisqatsi asks the viewers to ponder their relationship to a social system that has come to dominate them rather than serve them. Much of the film is exhilarating and beautiful in a way that may seem counterproductive to that end. But the cumulative effect is more meditative than frightening. It's not a world-shaking film, but it is an affecting one.
    • 80

      Slate

      There are utterly transcendent moments amid this 87-minute music video. It’s all about that pumping, hypnotic, emotionally-gripping Philip Glass vibe.
    • 78

      Austin Chronicle

      The worlds of the natural and the artificial are compared and contrasted in this non-narrative visual orgy.
    • 75

      Chicago Sun-Times

      Koyaanisqatsi is an impressive visual and listening experience, that Reggio and Glass have made wonderful pictures and sounds, and that this film is a curious throwback to the 1960s, when it would have been a short subject to be viewed through a marijuana haze. Far out.
    • 70

      The New York Times

      Koyaanisqatsi is an oddball and - if one is willing to put up with a certain amount of solemn picturesqueness - entertaining trip.
    • 60

      Variety

      Koyaanisqatsi is at first awe-inspiring with its sweeping aerial wilderness photography. It becomes depressing when the phone lines, factories, and nuke plants spring up. The pic then runs the risk of boring audiences with shot after glossy shot of man’s commercial hack job on the land and his resulting misery.

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