Koyaanisqatsi

I missed class on Tuesday so I hope I don't really say anything too derivative.

I'm sure I'm not the only one that noticed the incredible similarities between this film and Man With A Movie Camera. This film had perhaps a bigger universal sense about it as to literally describe the world that we live in rather than focus on a single city.
The beginning was really beautiful with all of its landscapes and the movement of nature. Without showing any lifeforms, the film showed that there was a different kind of life on earth. Earth was shown as a really dynamic and animate "being." (Props to the cinematographer for achieving these shots. They seemed almost impossible to capture at least to me.)
When humans were introduced to the film, things got incredibly hectic quickly. I'm not really sure precisely what theme was coming through to me at this point. Later on, I got the impression that things were speeding up and soon it was too much too quickly and the film ended. I was confuse as to whether this was a feel-good film like Dr. Langston described because the title means life out of balance and such and the film seemed to support it. All the stuff about ashes and cobwebs and the purification of the world kind of confused me though.
I thought the first and last scenes were really powerful. Thinking about it, maybe the director was trying to say that it was bad for mankind to try and reach the stars so to speak and that mankind was writing it's own death sentence by "progressing" technologically. It seemed as though there was some critical point where things have gone too far because of our own modernization and so nature takes it's own action against people. Crazy Stuff.
Philip Glass' soundtrack was really good but got old with the endless repetition. I know a little bit about minimalist music and it's cool how it was used for such a non-minimal topic, but in the end I wish he had broadened the music up a bit.