Visitors (2013)
Directed by Godfrey Reggio
From the director of KOYAANISQATSI, an astonishing film that documents the drama of how we both live and witness what we experience. Shot in rich black and white Godfrey Reggio's latest film finds the full spectrum of emotion in human faces, gorgeous landscapes and even the behavior of an especially expressive gorilla.
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With 1982’s Koyaanisqatsi (“life out of balance”) and 1988’s Powaqqatsi (“life in transformation”), Reggio considered modern man’s broken relationship with nature, contrasting footage of cities and remote villages with majestic shots of animals and natural wonders.
Composed of 74 roughly minute-long shots, underscored by the roiling rhythms of Philip Glass (as were the filmmaker's 1982 Koyaanisqatsi and two formally similar follow-up features), Reggio's black-and-white space oddity opens with Kubrickian flair, fading in on the baleful stare of a lowland gorilla, then a flyover of the lunar landscape with an empty sky above its horizon.
Filmgoers might be familiar with Reggio’s name from his previous three films — “ Koyaanisqatsi ,” “ Powaqqatsi ” and “ Naqoyqatsi ” — which coined a cinematic language all their own, combining a cascade of images, stream-of-consciousness editing, time-lapse photography and the ever-present Glass score, an evocative ostinato of moody foreboding.
According to the film’s official synopsis, this black-and-white effort from the director of Koyaanisqatsi “reveals humanity’s trancelike relationship with technology, which, when commandeered by extreme emotional states, produces massive effects far beyond the human species.”
Best known for 1982’s dreamlike Koyaanisqatsi, director Reggio segues from the “life out of balance” visual premise of his stunning debut to a calmer – but no less astonishing – deconstruction of the planet’s current state of singularly impressive distress.
Remember all those “Qatsi” movies – “Koyaanisqatsi,” “Powaqqatsi,” and “Naqoyqatsi”?
With 1982’s Koyaanisqatsi (“life out of balance”) and 1988’s Powaqqatsi (“life in transformation”), Reggio considered modern man’s broken relationship with nature, contrasting footage of cities and remote villages with majestic shots of animals and natural wonders.
Filmgoers might be familiar with Reggio’s name from his previous three films — “ Koyaanisqatsi ,” “ Powaqqatsi ” and “ Naqoyqatsi ” — which coined a cinematic language all their own, combining a cascade of images, stream-of-consciousness editing, time-lapse photography and the ever-present Glass score, an evocative ostinato of moody foreboding.
Remember all those “Qatsi” movies – “Koyaanisqatsi,” “Powaqqatsi,” and “Naqoyqatsi”?
Godfrey Reggio's experimental "Qatsi" trilogy (" Koyaanisqatsi " (1982) " Powaqqatsi " (1989) and "Naqoyatsi" (2002)) made visual statements about the violent ways man has brought technology to bear upon the natural world and his own race.
Produced in a retina-searing grayscale widescreen format, Godfrey Reggio’s very, very cold “Visitors” ought to be seen from as far away as possible, perhaps at the back of an orchestra hall where Philip Glass is conducting the score live, or, depending on your taste for this kind of eye-dandy eye-candy, from several blocks away, with many thick walls blocking the view of the latest philosophical staredown from the monk-turned-film-essayist of three decades who compiled “Koyaanisqatsi,” “Powaqqatsi” and “Naqoyqatsi.”
They ended up doing a “Qatsi” trilogy, following “Koyaanisqatsi“with “Powaqqatsi” and “Naqoyqatsi,” each with diminishing returns.
But where the director of 2001: A Space Odyssey had to fake his galactic vistas, Reggio – whose trilogy of Qatsi films rank among the most commercially successful avant-garde productions of all time – possesses the resources and the reputation to actually film in outer space (take that, Gravity!).
Is it wrong to think “2001: A Space Odyssey” when we cut from Triska to the moon, or to spend time pondering how the hell Reggio pulled off some of this?
And it's nowhere near as visionary as “2001: A Space Odyssey” whose imagery the movie evokes on multiple occasions.
This last notion is made explicit when the movie concludes on the sort of fourth-wall-breaking effect “presenter” Steven Soderbergh employed more successfully in Full Frontal .
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Godfrey Reggio’s new film, Visitors, isn’t an official sequel to his “Qatsi” trilogy, but thematically, it picks up right where 2002’s Naqoyqatsi left off.
Filmgoers might be familiar with Reggio’s name from his previous three films — “ Koyaanisqatsi ,” “ Powaqqatsi ” and “ Naqoyqatsi ” — which coined a cinematic language all their own, combining a cascade of images, stream-of-consciousness editing, time-lapse photography and the ever-present Glass score, an evocative ostinato of moody foreboding.
Produced in a retina-searing grayscale widescreen format, Godfrey Reggio’s very, very cold “Visitors” ought to be seen from as far away as possible, perhaps at the back of an orchestra hall where Philip Glass is conducting the score live, or, depending on your taste for this kind of eye-dandy eye-candy, from several blocks away, with many thick walls blocking the view of the latest philosophical staredown from the monk-turned-film-essayist of three decades who compiled “Koyaanisqatsi,” “Powaqqatsi” and “Naqoyqatsi.”
They ended up doing a “Qatsi” trilogy, following “Koyaanisqatsi“with “Powaqqatsi” and “Naqoyqatsi,” each with diminishing returns.
Godfrey Reggio's latest work, arriving 11 years after the conclusion of his Qatsi trilogy (which stretched from 1982's Koyaanisqatsi to 2002's Naqoyqatsi), resembles those uncategorizable films more than anything else.
Booking Reggio’s first film in more than a decade was always going to make waves; his immaculately filmed, non-narrative Qatsi trilogy—“Koyaanisqatsi” (1982), “Powaqqatsi” (1988), and “Naqoyqatsi” (2002)—is rightfully ranked among the most important artistic achievements of the last thirty years.
It's also not the equal of a host of other related films that come to mind: the cinema portraits by James Benning (“Twenty Cigarettes” in particular) or by Andy Warhol, Nicolas Philibert's “Nenette” (where the title orangutan stares back at the viewer for the length of the documentary), or Abbas Kiarostami's “Shirin” (in which we watch women watching a movie we never see).
Like 2012’s similarly deluxe travelogue Samsara (directed by Reggio’s former DP Ron Fricke), Visitors is content to score broad points off modern life – a scene of fingers moving over an invisible tracking pad facilely paints us as slaves to technology – instead of seeking out genuinely surprising points of view.
Here’s what I got: Visitors sometimes comes off like a postmodern King Kong, as when a beautiful lowland gorilla stares at the lens head-on, almost accusingly.