The film has just begun, and the various generating devices repeatedly tapped are in perfect harmony with the sound of the miners in the Baraíso gold mine in Brazil. The far, medium and close scenes are constantly changing, and the vertical depth of field emphasizes the vertical structure of the gold mine. . In the meantime, there is also a working scene in which every shot is brief and echoes the sound. Thinking that the Argentine movie "Travel" also has such a large vertical display of the Baraíso mine, the sky seems very far away.
After the film title Powaqqatsi appeared, the second piece of music with the arrival of the sunrise was more motivated. The picture unfolds from a working girl running under the golden light, the cello section repeats simple sound patterns, and the flute and wind music gradually follow in. With the spread of the musical motives, the picture focuses on the majestic sea and the fishermen working by the sea. The timpani and tambourine enhance the sound of the pipe music, and the movements of the characters in the screen are always shot and expressed with slow close-ups greater than 24 frames per second, showing the strength of the laborer's movements. As the musical motivation fully unfolded, the camera also turned to the terraced fields among the mountains and ended.
With the opening of a small waterfall lens, the third piece of music arrives. The bass part makes a slight appearance on the melody of the second piece, and the clarinet and the brass have a staggered dialogue. The picture seems to be a villager in Central Asia. With the entry of the triangle iron, special effects have been used in lens processing, such as completely corrugating the picture or tilting a large area of golden blocks (corn fields). After the picture returns to normal, it can be distinguished that there is an Arabic melody in the music. At this time, the camera seems to be aimed at the nomadic tribe of Eduin in North Africa.
From a high-altitude bird’s eye view of the prairie, the fourth segment is entered, the bass part is aggravated, and the motivation of the third segment is continued. In the lens, workers from the Indochina Peninsula are engaged in fishing, harvesting, weaving, trading, and trombone. Vigorously, there are believers bathing in the holy water in the Ganges in the opposite picture. Most of this passage is overhead shot.
With the faint voice of children in the previous paragraph, the black field gradually changed, and the musical motives completely changed, full of religious mystery. The temples of the major religions also appear in the gold. The percussion entered, and in the twilight, the fishing boats began to sing late; on the banks of the Ganges, the believers began to enter the tranquility; among the snow-capped mountains, the colored flags stopped fluttering. At the end, the camera is fixed on a building in the center of a sacred village. Is it Bhutan, Nepal?
The double bass in many previous paragraphs reappeared, showing the crowded streets of Indian cities, busy downtowns, and celebrations of the Andean Indians as widely as possible. The melody and structure of the soundtrack are the reproduction and enhancement of the second paragraph. The lens is completely separated from the natural or man-made landscape, and expresses the joy of the crowd, even like a promotional film praising the glory of labor. The herdsmen on the grassland are singing joyfully, the characters fade out, and the vast grassland appears and gradually turns into blue water.
The train rumbled past, and the carriages seemed endless. Finally, as the wind music enters, the screen becomes an aerial shot of an urban skyscraper. The horizontal parallel relationship between the train and the screen is transformed into the vertical vertical relationship between the tall building and the screen.
Some American stars, news and movie clips appeared, accompanied by clever sampling of the original picture sound, the musical motivation became quiet and profound, the calm and slow repetition of the sound pattern formed a huge contrast with the huge and complex picture. In the information age, we cannot escape the bombardment of images. The musical motivation remains, but the picture transitions from a complex chaos to a single neat, parallel buildings, marching troops, waving crowds, and standardized office buildings are displayed one by one as the trombone enters.
The rhythm became brisk, and at first I thought it was "spring water dingdong". The office workers in the metropolis of India started to work, and the streets were busy. At this time, a lot of normal speed shooting was used. With huge gaps in traffic flow, the lens can always capture individuals in the torrent. The fog appears, the string music enters, and the audience (listening) is drawn into the fog of sight (listening) perception. The fog dissipated, and the picture transitioned from the bustling city to the barren countryside and villages and towns. As night falls, people get off work, and the night market is lit up. It's time to lively. At this time, the colorful night of Hong Kong is emphasized. The music ended suddenly, but the lingering sound lingered.
Side shots of chimneys standing in the sky, crows throbbing in the garbage dump, overloaded ferries and trains. At this time, an extremely low-pitched brass instrument began again, and the trombone led the people in the picture who did not know where they were going. After giving performances to the pilgrims in Medina and the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the camera looked up at the Kuala Lumpur Twin Towers, and the strings entered with the rotating Ferris wheel, weakening the wind. The plane flicked from the bottom to the top of the screen, the pipe music was reinforced, the soil poured out, and the rocket lifted off. Music motives are getting more and more uncertain. Many times I think it is about to end, but it has been further strengthened. After the plane of Civil Aviation of China took off, the flute entered, and the camera turned to the modern new city under construction.
The rhythm of the music speeds up with the pace of the old man and the coachman in the picture, and the part of the previous picture that has not been able to unfold in the future can be fully expressed, and the marching marching band, the jumping fans, and the strikers fully explain one by one. Strings and wind music are strengthened together, and labor is intensified. At this time, there was a quick editing that was not available in the previous paragraphs, giving the picture a brief sense of oppression, and the subject of photography was still South Asia and Southeast Asia, the most intensely developed "emergency zone". The electronic musical instrument enters, and the dust that accompanies the screen ends this paragraph.
The lens dilutes the traffic on the highway, and the sound of the Middle Eastern chants that were hardly used before. The entities of dilapidated vehicles contrast with virtual images of passing vehicles, and the entities of beggars and abandoned babies on the street contrast with the virtual images of busy people. The jazz motives are eager to come out. The jazz drums followed the child's close-up for a short while, and then returned to the Middle East to sing. The entire passage is more like a slide show of a series of documentary close-ups of characters. Subsequently, the picture was fogged and rippled again.
The ripple continued. After the guitar was strummed for a short time, the clarinet whispered for a while. At the end of the film, the cast and crew appeared with the leading motives of the entire film's music, and the motives that appeared in each paragraph were integrated in the music.
Director Reggio believes that the use of high technology is very important. Computers are the most powerful tool in the world. The film also attempts to deify high technology, but also wants to point out concerns. The word Powaqqatsi refers to the southern hemisphere in the director's mind. In a broader sense, the terms of North-South dialogue and South-South cooperation represent the poor, developing southern world. The film graphically shows the social process of "South", perhaps trying to smash the previous so-called North-South dialogue standard. The soundtrack master Glass also has a deep feeling for the "southern hemisphere". When he finished the opening soundtrack, he took it to the Balaíso mine to listen to the people there.
QATSI is a trilogy in which Powaqqatsi is generally translated as mechanical life or transformed life,
Koyaanisqatsi is translated as unbalanced life, and Naqoyqatsi is translated as war life. Recalling the name of the movie, it seems to be a little bit commensurate. Director Reggio’s wish is that Powaqqatsi (Powakashi) represents the Southern Hemisphere, Koyaanisqatsi (Koyaanisqatsi) represents the Northern Hemisphere, and Naqoyqatsi (Naqoyqatsi) represents the war (conflict) in global life.
In the 24 years of work cooperation, Glass believes that it does not matter who the director and the soundtrack start first. In fact, the roles of the two in the work are often exchanged. Through this film, it may be possible to really show that the world's interesting lies in its diversity, so that there are various possibilities.
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