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Scored by Philip Glass and featuring goosebump-raising solos from cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Naqoyqatsi is the third and last instalment in a trilogy that began with Koyaanisqatsi, which concerned city scapes versus natural landscapes and Powaqqatsi, Godfrey Reggio's account of the effect of new technology on primal traditions.
Naqoyqatsi goes one step further to examine, in whirlwind visual style, the current reign of technology. The film, which is images set to music -- no narrative, no movie stars, no chat, no deus ex machina -- is enveloping in style and content. Naqoyqatsi, from the Hopi language, translates as 'each-other-kill many-life.' It means: (1) A life of killing each other. (2) War as a way of life. (3) Civilized violence.
The filmmaker, Godfrey Reggio, has said that he wonders whether humans still have the language to describe what their world has become. We feel the same way about trying to describe Natqoyqatsi. As with a dream, Natqoyqatsi makes perfect sense while you experience it but becomes impossible to describe afterward because the required words do not exist.
At times it's like seeing an Escher tessellation come alive. Infinite digits become human faces, the movement of soldiers becomes a ballet, waves turn into keys on a typewriter. Humans laugh in slow motion, people gesture hysterically on the floor of the stock market and a football huddle shot from within is transformed into a circle of surgeons.
It is psychedelic, hypnotic, exhilarating and horrifying, and sometimes all at once. And we haven't even got to the Philip Glass score or the Yo-Yo Ma cello solos ...
Naqoyqatsi unfolds in three chapters, more or less. One concerns the change from language to numerical code. The global currency of fame comes next, and the third movement addresses the end result of massive technological change. For this futuristic undertaking, almost everything you see is a special effect, and most of it is stock footage manipulated with digital technology. Many of the images are ordinary and familiar -- but once taken out of context, their meaning is dramatically changed.
Welcome to our one- wired world. That is Naqoyqatsi.
(This film is rated AA)