Naqoyqatsi was a visually interesting film - most of the time. There are certainly moments of beauty; it is in essence a ballet of motion put to screen viewed through the eyepiece of various manipulated patterns, which we are reminded pervade our existence, as we see with the stunning Mandelbrot sequence. Yet this "ballet" at times does get old. For instance, we could have seen less of the tunnel motion effect and the flashing of ones and zeros.
The images were ever-interchanging and evolving into each other or into something different. I don't believe the editing was amateurish at all. As for the remark about the film appearing low-tech, as if filmed from a TV screen, those were intentional effects!
Where I seem to differ from others on this movie is with the musical score. I simply felt on the whole, structuring Naqoyqatsi with the Phillip Glass compositions and Yo Yo Ma Cello work - beautiful though they were - as the only sound dimension left the film somewhat flat.
What was lacking here was more artistic communication. This I believe could have been achieved with a more lucid sound content, as one possibility, in contrast to the long singular unfolding set of somber strings. It could also have benefited from a minimal narrative treatment, perhaps separating the film into sections with more meaning, or with some dialogue.
The theme elements treated in the movie were mostly evident, if not a little underdeveloped and foggy. The primary causes of misery and war today being: consumerism, conformism, over-competitiveness, and modern technology on overflow. These we see through flashes of violence, slow motion imagery manipulation, and various negative aspects of society (mixed with various displays of innocent emotions). The found images are sometimes commonplace ones. But usually they are re-introduced with a unique enough flavor. However, often I wished Reggio would have done more with his image sequences. Perhaps the film was too careful in attempting to be visually appealing yet startling, while it would have done better to lend itself a little more to some chance events.
Naqoyqatsi achieves some great visual feats. But for a montage of this length, more coherency and less filler would have been kind of nice.
The images were ever-interchanging and evolving into each other or into something different. I don't believe the editing was amateurish at all. As for the remark about the film appearing low-tech, as if filmed from a TV screen, those were intentional effects!
Where I seem to differ from others on this movie is with the musical score. I simply felt on the whole, structuring Naqoyqatsi with the Phillip Glass compositions and Yo Yo Ma Cello work - beautiful though they were - as the only sound dimension left the film somewhat flat.
What was lacking here was more artistic communication. This I believe could have been achieved with a more lucid sound content, as one possibility, in contrast to the long singular unfolding set of somber strings. It could also have benefited from a minimal narrative treatment, perhaps separating the film into sections with more meaning, or with some dialogue.
The theme elements treated in the movie were mostly evident, if not a little underdeveloped and foggy. The primary causes of misery and war today being: consumerism, conformism, over-competitiveness, and modern technology on overflow. These we see through flashes of violence, slow motion imagery manipulation, and various negative aspects of society (mixed with various displays of innocent emotions). The found images are sometimes commonplace ones. But usually they are re-introduced with a unique enough flavor. However, often I wished Reggio would have done more with his image sequences. Perhaps the film was too careful in attempting to be visually appealing yet startling, while it would have done better to lend itself a little more to some chance events.
Naqoyqatsi achieves some great visual feats. But for a montage of this length, more coherency and less filler would have been kind of nice.