The final installment to the Godfrey Reggio-Philip Glass trilogy, a series of dialogue-less movies which documents the transformation from serene and organic Mother Earth to present-day artificial cyber-repetitiveness.

Many of the complaints filed by devoted followers of first movie Koyaanisqatsi stem from the notion that Naqoyqatsi is overblown with bells-and-whistles artifice, lacking the mystique and shamanistic qualities of Koyaanisqatsi. I tend to agree, in the sense that cinematographer Russell Lee Fine apparently throws every special effects filter into his digitized computer editing software for Naqoyqatsi. Throughout the movie, I frequently asked whether the film-makers have made a technical mistake and put the entire movie on negative film (as opposed to positive film), thereby generating practially 90% of the images in reverse. Is Fine trying to show us that viewing a reverse image will somehow enable us to penetrate into the depths of a setting? This would be akin to using big words to describe deep thoughts.

I think an oversight of Naqoyqatsi naysayers is that they overlooked the notion that this closing installment is, in fact, a continuum, a fulfillment of the prophecy set up by the Hopi words in the preceding two movies: Koyaanisqatsi (1. Crazy life. 2. Life in Turmoil 3. Life out of balance 4. Life disintegrating 5. A state of life that calls for another way of living), and Powaqqatsi (An entity, a way of life, that consumes the life force of other beings, in order to further its own life). Koyaanisqatsi, in 1983, visually predicted a future where cosmopolitan grids would be no larger than a micro-processor chip. Naqoyatsi merely realizes this prophecy.

If one were to inspect our present environment, our popular movies, and our daily household surroundings, it would become obvious that much of our world has been digitized. Naqoyqatsi presents that reality quite accurately. A trilogy of works is often a documentation of elapsed time, for the creator of the artpiece as well as his or her audience. Certainly Koyaanisqatsi‘c cinematographer Ron Fricke, is acquainted with that concept, as his other film along the same genre, is entitled Chronos. For Godfrey Reggio and Philip Glass to return to the format of their initial movie after some twenty years, would have been a dreadful mistake that would shortchange an artist’s evolutionary vision.

What I find lacking in Naqoyqatsi, is the spiritual insight, an earthy shamanism that reveals all that we see around us, but fail to realize. Koyaanisqatsi was singularly the most influential movie in my life, as I often revisit the concept of time, the repetitiveness of our lives, and the way we squander our short stay here over negligable tradeoffs. Koyaanisqatsi was a wake-up call that forced me rethink and spend my lifetime searching for another way of living. Naqoyqatsi, in contrast, is a sign of the times: It does not question, it does not seek. It is simply content with its artificial digitized CGI (computer generated images) reality, and expects us to accept it, unquestioningly.

And that, is its deepest message.