The film Koyaanisquatsi is made up of intriguing images and a compelling soundtrack. It is full of life and death, creation and destruction and beauty and horror. The audience is first shown the beauty and wonder of nature and then knocked down with images of destruction and of today's polluted environment. To me the images were moving and powerful, but the music tampered with and controlled the film. The emphasis in the music set the only emphasis for the film therefor creating very strong bias. Also for most of the people that watch this film, the music is probably the driving force and the main component that keeps there minds engaged and their eyes on the screen.
The soundtrack of this film was composed by a very remarkable musician, Philip glass. One of his works is shown in the video below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imbwn6iVryQ&feature=player_detailpage
For me, although I found the music beautiful, it became repetitive and i was easily distracted from the films grip. When one song continues to play for an extended period of time, no matter how much i like the song, it will start to bother me and grind on my nerves. There is a point I can reach with music where it has no beauty at all, but is only noise and multiple times the music in this film sounded only like noise to me.While watching Koyaanisquatsi I continually found myself wanting to turn the volume off and watch the film without it. The more a song built up and the longer it lasted, the more annoyed I became. I would have much rather watched this as a silent film.
When I watched Koyaanisqatsi, my feelings towards the soundtrack were very similar to yours. But looking back at it, I think it would have been very difficult to watch the documentary without any sort of music. Philip Glass's music portrayed the chaos of Reggio's images. Although the association of soundtrack and film provided for a painful experience, I feel Koyaanisqatsi wouldn't have caught my attention nearly as much without it's minimalist music.
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