Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance

By Eric Oslund

            To me the subject matter portrayed in the film Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance was that of cooperate America. The maker of this film seems to be against the path we are going down. He uses a very realistic perspective on the matter, and forces us to open our eyes to what is going on. He shows us a lot of scenes that we see all the time, but he shows us these scenes for extended periods of time, and then will slow the clips down or speed them up, depending on the mood setting he is trying to set. The maker of the movie also adds music to the clips of movie to help add more affect. After seeing all of this put together, and the film as a whole I believe that the director of the film wants his viewing audience to want to make a change from where our civilization is heading.

            This film seemed to be an educational/realistic documentary, but I also believe that it, in some ways, could be considered a dramatic movie. The movie is a silent film that has a relatively slow pace to it, but the pace seems to pick up,, or at least the scenes have faster movies in them, as the movie progresses. The realism of this video is extraordinary. It breaks down our everyday lives, and shows us the reality of how we are living that we don’t normally notice.

            This movies portrays many images starting with a beautiful earth that has not been effected by mankind, and then it shows dynamite blowing up rocks and from there it goes through many scenes of how man kind has just taken over. This film has a great sound track that will speed up or slow down with the scenes to help make the movie more dramatic. The movie scenes, along with the music, also change speeds to help emphasize different things. Through this movie there were two main scenes that stuck with me. The first one was of an office building at night. The office building has lights on all night and you can see people running around in all the rooms as the moon passes behind it. The other scene was one of people running around Wall Street. The movements of the people were so fast that they were all one big solid blur. The sounds throughout the movie created a very ominous feel. The order of the scenes went from an earth untouched by man, to one consumed by man, to one of man trying to leave earth, as though the place we created is now to bad to live on.

            The scene taking place in Wall Street mentioned earlier was a very strong scene. When I first saw it I thought that the blurs of people were prairie grass and the director made a scene where the Wall Street machines were in a prairie which got me thinking that Wall Street pretty much is the prairie for mankind in today’s society. It is our lively hood, and if something happens to it everyone is effected in one way or another, but the scene seems to actually be showing that our life is nonstop and everything happening around us is a blur, while we are also a blur to everyone else around us. This film is telling everyone that we need to change. The path that we are going down is not a good one. We are not caring about the environment around us, and almost treating it as a garbage/toilet, and if something doesn’t change we will no longer be able to live here.