Naqoyqatsi

2002

Action / Documentary / Music

21
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 48% · 52 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 70% · 2.5K ratings
IMDb Rating 6.4/10 10 6223 6.2K

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Plot summary

A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.


Uploaded by: FREEMAN
April 20, 2019 at 05:45 AM

Director

Top cast

Marlon Brando as Himself
Steven Soderbergh as Man Reflected in Digital Screens
Madonna as Herself
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
763.56 MB
1280*694
English 2.0
PG
23.976 fps
1 hr 29 min
Seeds 4
1.43 GB
1920*1040
English 2.0
PG
23.976 fps
1 hr 29 min
Seeds 16

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Jeremy_Urquhart 6 / 10

Interesting, but not as good as the earlier 'Qatsi' films

So some of it's definitely disappointing. I watched the first two Qatsi films back in 2013, and despite liking both a lot, seeing that Naqoyqatsi was less well-received made me apprehensive about watching it.

Finally watching it now, some eight to nine years later, some of that apprehension was reasonable, but some not so much.

The digital effects sometimes work and sometimes don't. To have computer-generated images of falling coins pop up multiple times in a montage that also shows stock market traders yelling, people gambling, and wealthy celebrities is pointless. You're already getting your point across just fine!

The computer-generated images are inconsistent, too, as are the filters used. Sometimes it's striking, like some night-vision type footage of warfare scenes. Sometimes, it looks pretty bad (there's a great time lapse shot of the White House that's preceded by an awful looking CGI-ish shot of the Hollywood sign, for example).

But y'know what? For all its flaws, it does do a decent job at capturing what the first decade of the 21st century sort of felt like. It's the only Qatsi film made during my lifetime, so that's something I could appreciate more so here than with the other ones. And the other thing done well here is the score: even if Godfrey Reggio might occasionally let you down with the visuals, Philip Glass brings his A-game when it comes to the music.

Things have changed so much since 2002 that I'd honestly like to see another film in this series that tries to capture either the 2010s or (god forbid) the mess that has so far been the 2020s. Even though both Reggio and Glass are still alive, I'm not holding my breath that they'll collaborate again to put out something similar, but you never know...

(EDIT: Looks like they did do another documentary called Visitors in 2013, so might have to check that out)

Reviewed by brchthethird 7 / 10

Distraction and destruction -- well-intentioned, but messy

NAQOYQATSI is the third installment in a trilogy by Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass that began with KOYAANISQATSI. It is a documentary (loosely so) that examines globalization, technology, and violence in a rather oblique way that uses image juxtaposition to make its points. And, for the duration of the film, is accompanied by a Philip Glass score. I only recently saw KOYAANISQATSI, which I thought was OK. I didn't completely "get" it, but the title's meaning at the end did help a little bit, in retrospect. For me, the meaning of NAQOYQATSI was a little more clear from the outset, as the idea of technological advances alternately helping and harming humanity isn't really anything new, having been addressed in a many a sci-fi film before and since. The film is divided into different segments, with each one going into a different aspect of technology or violence in human society. From all of the imagery, I gleaned that technological advances have created a passive, spectator society that, despite being able to move rapidly, still isn't going anywhere. We have also cultivated a society in which we obsess over superficial things, as well as worship power, fame, and money; and the advent of mass media has only entrenched this further. There was also images relating to the destructive power of technology, and its contribution to/role in real-world violence (juxtaposed with video game violence). All things considered, there is a lot to digest here, which would seem to indicate that this film requires multiple viewings to take all of it in. Still, I feel like the film lacked a strong through-line and cohesive message. Granted, the segments work individually, but taken as a whole, it smacks of throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. Overall, I would place this on a level a little below KOYAANISQATSI, from which it seemed to recycle a bit of thematic material. It is well-made and contains some good bits of message, but none of the observations are that original and it didn't quite gel into a cohesive whole.

Reviewed by Rodrigo_Amaro 10 / 10

Hyponitizing and a little bit critical

"Naqoyqatsi" is an experience different of what many viewers might seen it in the past 20 years. Remember the 30 last minutes of "2001: A Space Odyssey" when there was only visual effects images and the frightening music in the background and no words, no quotes were heard? Now, imagine almost 90 minutes of only that, the only exercise you have to do is sit, watch and think about why those images appeared and their meaning. This is "Naqoyqatsi".

In this documentary director Godfrey Reggio, music composer Philip Glass (from "The Hours") and animated director Jon Kane created a enormous montage about many aspects of life on Earth. But his approach is to show how our society become violent and that progress is a important part of that cause. The first image that appears is the Babel Tower and after that technology appears in its several forms in buildings, computers, science, medicine, our human body capable of doing miraculous things, the relation between the man and the sports, and the decadence of the mankind in violent acts. All this achievement was possible because of technology.

One important thing showed here is the difference between what humans can do and what technology can imitate too. For instance, the adoration that we have with famous people. In a take celebrities generated by computer walks by and the people are crazy about them, waving to them, taking photos. In the next scene we seen real artists walking in the red carpet; Marlon Brando, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Elton John and we seen the difference between them and the digital celebrities. It might seem the same thing but it's not. We are really interested in the real people and not in some CGI creation.

Here comes the difficult part of this film: the discussion and what do we learn with "Naqoyqatsi". There's criticism and there isn't, it seems plausible in one moment and totally useless and pointless in the other. In the whole film there's no critic but after the credits roll in the end and the meaning of the word Naqoyqatsi is shown there's a critic, there's the point of view of the director, and by that I mean that it might be too late for people get the idea of what this movie is about. Naqoyqatsi is a word of a tribe that means: societies that lives by killing each other, people living of war. This is a statement towards our society that gave 10 steps forward and walked backwards in 30 steps. Our material evolution led to our physical destruction and led to our possible extinction. Atomic bombs, protests, dictatorships, dictators and their ideologies, weapons of mass destruction, all the math used by Einstein and Oppenheimer for good reasons used in the bad and dangerous ones. Since there's no quotes, captions and that sort of things many people will walk out of this documentary without understand what the director meant to say with it.

This is a patient, wordless, and mind blowing experience where only the visual and the real images are important. Many of the images are shown in slow-motion, giving the viewer time to think, formulate a thought about what he's seeing at the moment. And of course Philip Glass's music, in it's quiet and slow language. Very mental and hypnotic.

I recommend you to watch if possible a similar documentary called "Nós Que Aqui Estamos Por Vós Esperamos" (translated by "Here We Are Waiting for You") a Brazilian documentary that follows almost the same path of "Naqoyqatsi" but it has more messages, more substantial meaning and captions that explain things. In this documentary director Marcelo Masagão collected several images of the 20th Century and created a fictional story for this images stating the different aspects of the human mortality. It's terrific. 10/10 for both projects!

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