Visitors

Having loved Koyaanisqatsi and its first sequel, I was looking forward to this film. In case anyone should think I'm unfamiliar with art-house films or anything without a conventional structure, I'm a serious arty film buff and avoid Hollywood or mainstream commercial cinema like the plague. Mostly I watch subtitled foreign films. I was also a Reggio/Glass fan. However, after 20 minutes I found Visitors so tiresome and boring that I fast-forwarded the rest, and in 5 minutes had reached the end. I realise this was supposed to be a trance-like film, but after a short time it was obvious what Reggio had to say (much the same as in Koyaanisqatsi), and it seemed almost like a pastiche of a Reggio/Glass film. It almost seemed as if the film had been made at normal speed and then shown in slo-mo to achieve a mesmeric effect, because to see it played faster didn't appear to miss much. I replayed the opening 20 minutes just to make sure.

Well, this one certainly tested my patience. Director Reggio, known for his illustrious "Qatsi" trilogy, attempts to thematically explore humanity's relationship with modern technology through a series of miniature slow-motion clips. This mostly comprises of entranced faces staring directly at the camera, a dilapidated amusement park and overbearing concrete buildings. An eclectic selection of contemporary images one may find when watching the tape from 'Ringu'.

Ironically, Reggio portrays this documentary as a horror film, concluding his non-verbal art installation piece with images of deforestation, pollution and abandonment. Acting as a last resort to attempt to convey the apparent message of humanity's enslavement by technology causing the disinterest of our planet's welfare. Y'know what? It's condescending as hell! A pretentiously contemporaneous method of communicating an issue we are already aware of, except instead of actually displaying the dark side of civilisation, we are presented with an hour of faces. Hauntingly hypnotic? Definitely, particularly when accompanied by Glass' repetitive orchestral piece that further enhances the trance-like state when staring at a screen for an hour and a half. But absurdly ineffective due to the lasting power of these images being absent almost entirely.

Reggio could've condensed this down to thirty minutes and still have the same result. An additional hour of gormless eyes and general unhappiness is not going to further the director's point. Self-absorbing indulgence, I expected nothing less from an artist who is attempting to claw back his cult status from 'Koyaanisqatsi'. Heck, the images themselves aren't majestic enough to appreciate, unlike 'Samsara'. This is art. It's ambiguous. People will extrapolate something different out of it. Whilst some clips substantiated their purpose, notably the auditorium staring at an ape, most just had me rating faces out of ten due to their lack of impact in a message that should've been conveyed with more urgency.

I really liked the shot of the gorilla and also the buildings but I couldn't help but not care about the people so I went to write this review instead.

The pacing of the images adds up to a constant slow mo effect, which is nice but gets old quickly.

Being a Philip glass fan I can only like the music but to be fair I wouldn't put it on much by itself. I'd have rather liked to hear some crazy Einstein on the beach rhythms with these images, it might change the tempo and vibe a bit. Wait I can just listen to the album on my headphones and mute this.. later..

Godfrey Reggio first came to international prominence in 1982 with his extraordinary visual essay "Koyaanisqatsi", (I don't think of it as a documentary). This wordless account of 'life out of balance' was followed by "Powaqqatsi" and "Naqoyqatsi", all similarly looking at life on this planet as if seen perhaps by an outsider, an alien observing us but keeping their distance. These films were tone-poems in the most literal sense; wordless they may have been but all driven forward by the continuous, energizing scores of Philip Glass.

He made "Visitors" in 2014. The title alone alludes more to the concept of 'outside' observation although the second face we see, (of many, many faces; the first is that of a large gorilla), is of a young girl looking directly at the camera, followed by that of a man. Who, we find ourselves asking, are the visitors? The faces on the screen? Us, the audience in the auditorium? Are we watching or are we being watched? If "Koyaanisqatsi" was about 'life out of balance' then the measured pace of the shots in "Visitors" would seem to be very much about life in balance although gradually these 'still' images give way to movement, of people in slow motion, of clouds racing across the sky. Children are seen in close-up but they seem to be on a merry-go-round; the balance is being interrupted.

Of course, it's impossible to think of these images without Philip Glass' accompaniment. Perhaps never in the history of the movies has music and image been so conducive to one another than in the films of Godfrey Reggio. Lacking any kind of narrative structure I have often felt his films were more like video installations to be experienced projected onto the walls of an art gallery rather than to be seen in a cinema or on television. They are certainly the kind of films for which the term 'art-house' might have been invented.

"Visitors" is shot in black and white, making it perhaps the most 'art-house' of all his films. Is it boring? I'd be a liar if I didn't say yes but only because we are not used to seeing this kind of film-making, which is hypnotic if nothing else. Is it pretentious? Probably, but in relation to what since no-one else is doing this kind of stuff outside of the avant-garde. What's for certain is, you won't find its like elsewhere.

It's been a real privilege to have followed Godfrey Reggio's work from Koyaanisqatsi (1982) until his latest, Visitors, a bold and profound continuation of his cinematic vision and dialogue.

Some of the readers of the reviews of this movie will hopefully see the particularly relevant irony of those who lividly complain about this movie being "boring, "slow", "uninteresting", "pointless", "a waste of time", "worst movie ever", "watch in fast forward mode!". They may never appreciate that the long takes of people's faces, seemingly in trances, are simply reflections of their own faces in the Reggio mirror. They are looking at themselves as they spend most of their awake time - visually plugged into their Wide Screen TVs, computer screens, video games, movie screens, smart phones, etc.. Immediate gratification, exuberant sensory stimulation and simple short answers frustratingly pervade these commentators as it does our now screen-based civilization.

With the ubiquity of screen-based existence, humanity has changed drastically in only a few decades. It's up to you to decide if that's good or bad but if you are familiar with Reggio's work, it can pretty much be summed up as his artistic rendering of the impact industry and technology has had on us - our species - spiritually, culturally, socially, individually, artistically, commercially etc, and importantly, the parallel impacts these changes have had on nature. The continuous visual juxtaposition between humans and animals, between dead buildings and dead landscapes are pure Reggio, beautiful yet deeply dark, illustrating this parallel both literally and in layers of metaphor and symbolism. The inability to sense or comprehend these layers is, as always, a limitation of the viewer, not the artist.

The movie itself, is bold in a number of ways.

Style-wise, it is Reggio's first all black & white feature with all or much of the background transformed to black and foreground detail replaced with blown out whites - visually stunning. The underlying themes are so effectively brought out with this style. The complete lack of colour further emphasizes the addiction of our culture to sensory extremes which induce pleasing and intense moods/mental states that do not require physical motion (other than to actuate a mouse or remote control) and only require our eyes to be open and lock into the screen interface.

But the true boldness is that the focus of his "critique" is not generally towards modern human civilization (industry, war, human exploitation, environmental exploitation, poverty, etc..) as in his previous work but this time, there is a personal element mixed in with the more familiar artistic diatribe against technology. This time, you look into the Reggio mirror, and you see yourself staring, blankly, quasi-comatose, right back at yourself. You are watching yourself.. watch yourself, and it's not pretty. An unsettling realization for each and every one of us.

Relax, perhaps a glass of wine, settle down for an hour and a half, douse pre-expectations, open your mind and experience another Reggio masterpiece. Ask yourself what 'Visitor' means… Buddhists already know.