Koyaanisqatsi-Godfrey Reggio

There is no need of many words
to show that Nature has no
end code and that all causes Final
are nothing more than fictions human.
Spinoza, Ethics

First film of the trilogy "qatsi" by the director Godfrey Reggio. Released in 1982, will follow Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi, both installed on the thematic perspective of the first, through reading keys enlarged. This is an aesthetic experiment. Nothing more challenging choice for a film that does not provide neither plot nor the characters but develops along a highly symbolic journey in which images and music promises a line between essential and continues the viewer and the message-mirror resulting therefrom. The title, borrowed from the Hopi language, means "life in turmoil" and see the relationship between man and nature since the dawn development of modern technology.

The music by Philip Glass, present throughout the trilogy, the pair weave perfectly sound / image, encouraging the use of a path uncritical and subliminal which man takes part only at the end. From the power of nature that sees rise inaccessible landscapes in a loneliness without eyes to the power of the man who argina, discards and model the "divine indifference," said Montale. The shape and scabra indisciplinata of physis becomes dizzying skyscraper architecture: the correction of a mistake precarious objective which is to dell'esserci. The documentary proceeds without trial and without question. There is the WHO. There is the event. There is a subject that is trying to adapt to a form more universal as possible. A poem by images ", as was defined in concentric circles, in which the viewer is playing the same game by Gadamer aesthetic: the first principle of the work of art. The incipit from biblical genesis becomes a climax neurotic imaging accelerated where time is no longer master.

Koyaanisqatsi is a setback to time, a chasm dall'amplesso erotic self-destructive. Technology is already nature. Seen from above, parking is a colored carpet, lights of cars is tramutano night in acrobatics abstract, a building that collapses, paper stropicciata. The intent of Reggio is not a complaint but exclusivity search for beauty and 'disquiet at the same time. Beauty aesthetic and existential anguish. The latter emerges between the sides without character, between faces framed in the middle of history.

Faces that do not ask, nor answer but stop hanging on the "vital turmoil." The wonder of nothingness. Yet, beyond good and evil, progress and nails glass cracks: the rocket takes off, aspires tenacious resists and then bursts.

Koyaanisqatsi is an exercise in circular death: safeguarding the economic structure poured into the frenzy of a citizen, global, universal. A cycle that is repeated in which the particular "want" the universal if and only if it is pervaded by the musical language that, by its very nature, suggests the salvation through representation.

Since that is not representable generates terror drill to die would take care of distress and make art. In this way, the chasm between man and nature will have no way to exist and the turmoil will be the human semblance of calm.

Marina Guerrisi