Music and Images

Music is a powerful tool. It sets the scene in a movie or TV show. Imagine a killing scene in a horror movie with happy music playing or no music at all. You would probably not be scared. It can make you want to get up and dance or sit down and meditate.

Psycho Shower Scene With and Without Music

The music of Koyaanisqatsi reflects the scenes of everyday life as being repetitive and fast paced. The nature scenes usually have soft music with long notes instead of fast repetitive runs. The film opens with shots of nature and ominous music before abruptly changing to a fast tempo and repetitive runs. The faster music builds as piercing notes enter as Godfrey Reggio, the director, focuses on people’s faces. The music falls back to the slower tempo with men chanting “koyaanisqatsi” as a building falls in the middle of a city. The people are no longer being zooming by but are being slowed down by special effects.

Koyaanisqatsi means life out of balance. The music paired with the right scenes shows the viewer how different life can be. But is life really out of balance? What counts as being out of balance? The music, to me, suggests that we have increased the gap between civilization and nature. Nature seems to progress at its own pace while we must move at the pace of society. The music was more interesting to me than the actual film. The pictures seemed very random to me and did not mean much. I liked some scenes but the images were boring to me.