I remember seeing it in the cinema when it first came out, and later got a copy on VHS tape. My son now has a BluRay edition of the film which we watched in 2021.
One section features the detonation of the notorious St. Louis public housing complex called Pruitt-Igoe in 1976. This had become a dangerous, blighted site, with its dense, modernist towers, designed by the World Trade Center architect: Minoru Yamasaki, which were starkly different from the surrounding blocks and went the way of a lot of 1960s and 70s housing developments which were designed by people who weren't necessarily going to be living in them.
The BluRay cover below is the one used in the Criterion Collection.
The hypnotic music is by Philip Glass, who has scored a range of other movies as well.
There are a great many locations featured in the film, which also includes sequences which are speeded up or slowed down to dramatic effect to show the patterns and flow of clouds over a mountain range, but also the rapid movement of people through the streets of a city, with its pulses of movement and pauses waiting for the lights to change.
Slowly, the presence of mankind drips into the film: we see power lines, mines and atomic explosions. Then, after half an hour or so – yes, this film demands commitment, concentration and utter capitulation – the pace and visual intensity picks up, as some transfixing footage of derelict housing estates being demolished feeds into urban scenes of traffic, shown in either slow motion or rapid timelapse.
The film inspired other films with an environmental theme, including Baraka and Samsara, which had the same cinematographer: Ron Fricke. There are also similarities with the work of Edward Burtynsky and his 'Manufactured Landscapes'.
Here are the first ten minutes of the film.
"For some people, it's an environmental film. For some, it's an ode to technology. For some people, it's a piece of shit. Or it moves people deeply. It depends on who you ask. It is the journey that is the objective."
Comments
Post a Comment