Godfrey Reggio makes modern life absorbing and uncomfortable to watch through photography and music. We rate Koyaanisqatsi highly, though his broad suspicion of technology can leave us asking questions the images cannot answer.
Fi1m perspective
Reggio sets natural landscapes against urban development in Koyaanisqatsi (1983), asking us to look closely without a conventional story to follow. Ron Fricke's photography uses time-lapse to make that comparison arresting, while Philip Glass's score makes sustained looking pleasurable. We felt uneasy watching the urban images because the music made their strain so inviting to stay with. That pleasure matters when a director is asking for this much concentration. Reggio gives us a reason to keep watching beyond agreement with his environmental concerns.
The difficulty is how quickly the comparison seems decided. Nature is treated as innocent, while the city is made to carry the blame. We can recognise the damage on screen without accepting that it tells us enough about urban life, or whose decisions have shaped it. Reggio's environmental case needs distinctions that beautiful landscapes cannot supply. This remains a substantial limitation in a film we recommend: the images deserve the attention, even when we are unconvinced by what he wants us to take from them.
His debut feature established the wordless approach that became the basis of the Qatsi trilogy. Powaqqatsi (1988) turns towards life in developing regions, with a more meditative pace. Naqoyqatsi (2002) completes the trilogy with digitally manipulated imagery examining a life shaped by technology. Across Reggio's work, Glass's recurring scores help organise our attention. Repetition is the risk when both the method and the complaint about technology are so recognisable.
Visitors (2013) changes the pace through extended black-and-white close-ups of faces and landscapes, asking us to attend to the act of watching itself. The later Once Within a Time (2022), co-directed with Jon Kane, takes the form of an anarchic fairy-tale fantasy. These are changes of approach within a career persistently concerned with technology and what it does to our lives. We would begin with Koyaanisqatsi, where the pleasures and the limitations are both clear. Give it time, and do not feel obliged to agree with it.
Biography
Godfrey Reggio is an American filmmaker. Born in New Orleans in 1940, he joined the Christian Brothers religious order at the age of 14 and spent 14 years in training that included periods of silence and prayer. After leaving the order he worked as a social activist in New Mexico, co-founding community organisations including Young Citizens for Action and La Clinica de la Gente.
Reggio is known for the Qatsi trilogy of wordless experimental films with scores by Philip Glass: Koyaanisqatsi (1982), which he also produced and co-wrote, Powaqqatsi (1988) and Naqoyqatsi (2002). He directed the short film Anima Mundi (1991) and later Once Within a Time (2023).
