Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance (Godfrey Reggio, 1982)
Rating: 9.4
A stunning experimental documentary consisting of montages of imagery without any synchronized sound or voice overs, accompanied only by Phillip Glass's moving score. This is the first of a trilogy of films commenting on anti human progress and the decay of humanity and environment. The film is bookended by a rocket taking off in the beginning which we later discover in the end is actually the Challenger Space Shuttle as we witness it's demise. In between these images we are privy to a frantic Eisensteinian montage using colliding angles and speeds of war related bombings and explosions, collapsing buildings, and beautiful time lapses of skylines, traffic, and people on the streets. The film shows both the evils and beauty of modernization with low angle shots of ominous looking skyscrapers as well as juxtapositions of natural environments with man-made structures.
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