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Naqoyqatsi is the third film in the Qatsi trilogy, a series of films conceived by director Godfrey Reggio that all feature music by the minimalist Philip Glass. The first two films, Koyaanisqatsi ("life out of balance") and Powaqqatsi ("life in transformation"), are landmarks in art cinema; neither film has any semblance of a narrative, as they are simply images of the world placed alongside Glass’ score (see also the recent Jackass: The Movie for a film with, ironically, no narrative). Both films-particularly Koyaanisqatsi-are haunting, unforgettable allegories that follow Reggio’s vague prognosis of technology taking over our lives.

Koyaanisqatsi described a world coming into conflict with technology; made in 1983 (and executive produced by Hollywood luminary Francis Ford Coppola), it featured beautiful images of nature (filmed by the incomparable Ron Fricke) juxtaposed with inventive representations of a plasticized, assembly-line lifestyle. Powaqqatsi (backed by Coppola’s buddy George Lucas in 1988) further developed this be investigating the effects of this transformation on the people of the world themselves-particularly those in underdeveloped countries, where the lack of technology has been especially evident. Naqoyqatsi (fourteen years in the making and now supported by Steven Soderbergh and the cronies at Miramax) seeks to close the trilogy with a bleak view of our advanced future-one Reggio sees as endless conflict: "Naqoyqatsi" is translated from Hopi as "a life of killing each other."

Alright. So that’s the history, which is necessary for this film, which is part of a totally unique trilogy-and is totally unique when compared to its predecessors. With the exception of the opening shots of a busted-up abandoned building, not a single shot in the film is natural. Every frame is either completely animated (brilliantly imagined by visual designer Jon Kane) or, in the case of actual film, distorted in some way. This is a total visual departure from the earlier films, from which much of the magic came in the hypnotic beauty of their natural images. Reggio seems to be after a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy-he refuses to let our completely artificial America be seen naturally.

Naqoyqatsi is also considerably more personal and preoccupied with people-something Koyaanisqatsi examined from a distance and Powaqqatsi did so rather impersonally. The film is divided into a number of movements, characterized by Glass’ superb score. It opens with a sort of introduction to technology, framed by the dichotic nature of the binary code; this leads into a study of the human form, which Reggio represents with athletes in a number of scenes that recall Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad. After the third act, which is concerned with money, the film takes off with an amalgamation of these themes intertwined with conflict, war, and destruction.

This is a demanding film, but its hardly intellectual. The most fascinating-and most criticized-facet of the Qatsi films is the relative lack of narrative thrust in them. By putting a picture up of news cameras surrounding a political dignitary and then dissolving to a similar scene set up around former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman, what is Reggio saying? Anybody can put together two scenes and say they mean something, but Reggio creates such an ambient experience that everything blends into a common event that is specific to the filmgoer. This may be a very life-affirming film for a computer programmer, or a very grim one for an environmentalist. In short, it’s art on film, the purest exploration of non-objective expression available in moving pictures. Reggio seems to answer those critics with one of the film’s most stunning pieces-dozens of recognizable paintings melt into each other repeatedly in a psychedelic mush of color.

The visual nature of the film isn’t as conducive to the style that created the unforgettable hot dog sequence in Koyaanisqatsi or the contemplative shot that closes Powaqqatsi, but Reggio is able to use the digital format in very dynamic ways-and in doing so indicts even himself in the massive transition to a society of zeroes and ones. Perhaps the presence of Yo-Yo Ma’s beautiful cello solos (which slowly die as the film progresses) against the familiar score are the final sound of artistic hope in a world where we face the synthetic mugging of a model as she "eats" a sandwich. The last image before the opening title is a shocking parade of people filmed with a sort of x-ray camera that makes them all look like the Evil Dead, a very telling comment when placed in the context of the rest of the film. There’s a stunning exploration of Madame Tussaud’s, a time-lapse starscape, and the endless approach of symbols from the center of the screen directly at the audience. One of the most telling bits comes at the end of a number of black and white images of people smiling. A couple moves close together, as she whispers to him; they are then pulled apart-whether by Reggio or by their natural actions, who knows. The film wants us to question this sort of action and whether ot not it is real and natural; by implicating itself in its own prediction it manages to be powerful without hypocritical. We can't tell what's going on, but that's sort of the point.

Naqoyqatsi is the definitive post-modern masterpiece, an enthralling document of modern consumer culture too preoccupied with eating itself alive that it misses the beauty of our natural universe. Watching the film makes one long for the magnificent vistas of Koyaanisqatsi or even the African shanties of Powaqqatsi. Instead, the digital nature of the film implies us in the world’s self-destructive cycle, an event Naqoyqatsi hints at a little too convincingly.

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