Naqoyqatsi
I'm not the first person to point out that this kind of film feels like a 60s or 70s holdover, an example of what used to be called a "head trip" film?the kind most likely to be enjoyed by young moviegoers. (With its mirrored split-screen effects, purposefully unreal colors and other technical tricks, much of the film suggests the voyage into the monolith that ended the ultimate head trip movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey.)
All this might explain why reviews of Naqoyqatsi have been mostly dutiful and in some cases mildly dismissive, conceding the skill required to make such a film while resisting the notion that it might have anything interesting to say, or that the experience of seeing the movie might enrich anyone's life. Reggio's movies inspire such reactions because there's nobody else like him. He's a purely experimental filmmaker who works at feature length, and whose work aims to balance political relevance and visionary showmanship. He wants to be taken seriously while hypnotizing people with spectacle; he doesn't want to tell you what to think, he just wants to tell you what to think about. His movies immerse you in eye-popping pictures and slam you against a wall of sound and music, cutting quickly throughout. The result is a style that teases big ideas without exploring them too deeply?a style that admits and even embraces contradiction.
Academic types scoff at this series, complaining that its "statements" are obvious, even stale. (Naqoyqatsi demonstrates, among other things, that nature and technology are forever at odds; that humanity often behaves like a machine or a virus; that different ethnic groups ignore common ground while obsessing over superficial differences; that we are destroying the world as we reshape it, etc.) But I'm starting to think that in some fundamental way, Reggio, Glass and the series' editors?who collaborated on the series so closely that it might be considered a team effort?have been misinterpreted even by their fans. Naqoyqatsi is even more fluid, abstract and dense than its predecessors, a waterfall of free-associative elements; as in the rest of the trilogy, I doubt the filmmakers are pushing definitive statements. They're just using the basic components of cinema?composition, montage, music?to spur viewers to draw comparisons between ideas and themes, then leave the theater and talk about what they saw. Like the other two Reggio movies, the title of this one comes from a Hopi word. The rough translation is "War as a way of life," a phrase that pierces Americans more deeply today than at any time since the Gulf War.
Naqoyqatsi, for example, is full of cuts that link militarism, technology and nature. A cascading waterfall or surging ocean wave becomes a line of marathoners, protesters or swimmers, which link up with images of soldiers from different nations marching in lockstep. Sometimes Reggio uses digital cut-and-paste technology to replicate buildings or individuals within frames, or to repeatedly rewind actions and start them over, so that human beings replicate the same motions like interlocking clock gears. Protesters raise and lower the same signs repeatedly over the course of several seconds, so that a crowd of humans seems robotic. A military transport plane opens its bay doors and disgorges the same platoon of armor-clad paratroopers over and over again, like a metal monster vomiting an endless stream of insects. Such images reinforce the notion of humanity being dehumanized, or getting in touch with its animal instincts via technology.
Yet Reggio contradicts them in a haunting section that juxtaposes closeups of different people from different races smiling and laughing. The montage shows us (rather than tells us) that we're more alike than different and that if we could recognize this fact, we might not be eager to band together in armored mobs and go kill each other. (Just because an idea is simplistic doesn't mean we shouldn't consider it.) Reggio thinks the rush to mechanization and the seemingly automatic cycles of war and peace are troubling?that they may be turning us into machines, or bugs or some other less-than-human thing?but he doesn't outright condemn them. He and his collaborators view these phenomena with cool curiosity, through scientists' eyes. Computer animation that zips us through tunnels of ones and zeros matches up with POV footage from helicopters and jets hurtling low over landscapes ravaged by war. The thematic connection seems obvious?something like "technology opposes creation with destruction." But as always, Reggio refuses to do more than make the connection; he wants you to take it from there. Kane's editing links disconnected images through their movements and their shapes (circles, ovals, converging lines) rather than through their content, as a skilled poet arranges line breaks by listening to the sound and rhythm of words.
In all three films, the filmmakers stop short of offering condemnations, much less solutions. In the end, this is a good thing, for both the series and its audience. If Reggio's collage films were more definitive and explicit, they'd have no shelf life; they wouldn't find a big audience or touch anyone outside of the usual kneejerk lefty academics. Because they're so unformed and mysterious?and so viscerally commanding?they can reel in just about anybody.
Framed
You should be dancin', yeah! Saturday Night Fever, the 1977 smash that kept disco on life support for another four years, gets a 25th-anniversary rerelease Nov. 6. Don't expect a flood of media interest; Paramount's library of titles should be a reissues goldmine, yet somehow the company fails to adequately exploit its most enjoyable recent triumphs. (Anniversary reissues The Godfather and Grease were badly mishandled, coming and going in the blink of an eye.)
Fever will play locally at the Pioneer Theater, hardly a major venue, but at least there you can appreciate a good movie with a small, attentive crowd. Watching the film again recently, I was struck by how uncommercial it seems by today's standards. John Travolta's white ethnic hero isn't a hero; he's just a dumb, impulsive kid, more talented than wise, often crude, selfish and vicious. He's not presented as a diamond in the rough?just a young man who's a wee bit more talented and ambitious than are his pals in the neighborhood. By the end of the movie, he's proved only that he can brush against self-awareness. Sad to think that a quarter-century ago, a bleak urban melodrama solidly based in reality could be a smash, and that today, such a thing seems impossible.
Nassau Street: Where Stamp Collecting Began
"Old Smoke," p. 13