Product Description

Miramax Home Entertainment and Oscar(R)-winning filmmaker Steven Soderbergh (Best Director, TRAFFIC, 2000) present NAQOYQATSI ("Life As War"), from filmmaker Godfrey Reggio, in collaboration with composer Phillip Glass, whose original score features renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma. In this cinematic concert -- the concluding film of the Qatsi Trilogy preceded by the critically acclaimed KOYAANISQATSI ("Life Out Of Balance"), and POWAQQATSI ("Life In Transformation") -- mesmerizing images reanimated from everyday reality, then visually altered with state-of-the-art digital techniques, chronicle the shift from a world organized by the principles of nature to one dominated by technology, the synthetic, and the virtual. Extremes of intimacy and spectacle, tragedy and hope, fuse in a tidal wave of visuals and music, giving rise to a unique artistic experience that reflects Reggio's visions of a brave new globalized world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43722 in DVD
• Brand: Buena Vista Home Video
• Released on: 2003-10-14
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Animated, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 89 minutes

Amazon.com
Whether your intellect is completely engaged or passively detached, any viewing of Naqoyqatsi is likely to provoke a fascinating response. You can view it as a magnificent, visually stimulating music video (as critic Roger Ebert suggested you should), or in context as the third and most unsettling film in director Godfrey Reggio's "qatsi" trilogy, each titled from the Hopi language, and preceded by Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi ("Life out of Balance" and "Life in Transformation," respectively). "Life as War" is the translation of this film's title, and Reggio's theme is not one of conventional warfare, but of daily life as warfare in the age of rapidly evolving technology. The entire trilogy views humankind as a blight on the pristine nature of Earth, but here the theme is taken to its inevitable extreme: a constant flow of new and archival images--manipulated with solarization, digital enhancements, thermal effects, 2-D and 3-D animation, etc.--combine to convey athletic and military regimentation, culminating in the doomsday flowering of missiles, rockets, and all varieties of nuclear weaponry. The cumulative effect, when combined with Philip Glass's mesmerizing score (his best of the trilogy, with cello solos by Yo-Yo Ma) is one of doom-laden portent, but, as Stephen Holden observed in the New York Times, the film is also arrestingly beautiful as it weaves its hypnotic, apocalyptic spell. For those who wish to delve further, Reggio, Glass, and editor/visual designer Jon Kane provide valuable insight in a bonus panel discussion. --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker
Depressing, but that may be the point. This is the third film in Godfrey Reggio's qatsi series, a trilogy designed to remove the oblivious shine from modern life. Like the others, it's a series of short clips and images set to a score by Philip Glass. There's no narration-Reggio believes that "the language of the moment is the image," and the title translates from the Hopi as "a life of killing each other." The subject is not so much war as what might be called the hippie matrix-a world view that sees man as dominated by corporations, industry, and technology. Reggio has a particular talent for collecting footage from the visual fringe, such as industrial videos and MRI scans, and then distorting them in ways that makes them beautiful and ominous. The movie works best at its less didactic moments; it's not the A-bomb cloud that will haunt your dreams but the crash-test dummies in a bucking airplane, moving in slow motion with near-human grace. -Michael Agger
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker