Qatsi

 

 

Powaqqatsi, the second in the Glass and Reggio trilogy, is beautiful, of course of course, though the idea seems awfully tired. Though I know it's not really about an idea, it's about the sensory experience of an idea. It’s about the way our host condition, our most current “environment of life”           feels.           Just then.

               Early on it's people travelling up a mountain made of mud, everybody lugging bags of sand or something on their heads or on their backs, black straps around their foreheads and all of them walking in tight succession. The music here is ironically high, sweet voices. Toward the end of this long scene—nothing but muddy people moving up a muddy mountain with their burdens of sopping earth—we see a body being hauled up too. No narrative, no

 

face, just a long thin brown body christlike in the muck and hoisted by two people. Between the bottom and the top of mountain, Reggio seems to be saying,

 

is our most recent body. On its way. To altitude; some stratum of unthickness. Instead what we get,

 

what we always get, is crush and stuff. Enormity staring as Oblivion, and a little mossy angst. Slathered-upon- everything mirror finishes. The continuous cracked, modular calling in boss. And the Bomb, from day one, in every country, every house, every heart. Billions and billions of

*

 

Watched Koyaanisqatsi this evening, right side of my mouth hugely numbed from the dentist, like an 8-ball in my jaw. First third or so of the film: massive natural landscapes at different speeds, almost no animals, just the mineral world in largescale waves and seeping undulations, a pulsing planetary stone.

 

About a third in, we start to see technology, urban shots of every kind, mostly of buildings and freeways, gargantuan human structures pretty much stuffing the frame. Shots of L.A. at night from the air. Reminds me of the many times I've landed in that city, going home.  The multi-colored lights like a treasure box spilled and spread smoothly out, methodically arranged for miles and miles over pitch black velvet or sand. Every single tiny light a lonely act. a fact. a fad. an ad.  For a minute, a viewer is tempted to believe that someone actually intended for L.A. to be L.A. We’re almost tempted to believe that someone put it all together just to look this beautiful, at night from the air.

 

Reggio: technology is the new body, the earth itself. New Earth. I don't know. Am thinking it's actually Advertising now, isn’t it? It fills the frame and exceeds the frame. It's between scenes and inside of scenes. It's between movies and inside of movies and it's the movies themselves which are ads for fast food and kid's toys and of course ads for movies themselves are everywhere as well. The contemporary body as spam or even just abstract Commercial Transaction. Pure transaction the only intention, the objects of trade and any collateral damage irrelevant—The body a stock market. An almost ethereal but not spiritual condition. A replacement of the spiritual condition. New Spirit. Despite certain lingering solids;              love…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© Nichols 2004
Draft posted for temporary viewing

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