Everything Looks Better in Black and White

I rented Visitors on DVD last week, knowing nothing about it except that it was the fourth instalment in Godfrey Reggio's "Quatsi" series. Koyaanisqatsi, his first, made a huge impact on me when PBS aired it in 1985. I'd never been so moved to question the prison of our modern human culture before, nor had I ever heard the beautiful, repetitive music of Philip Glass.

Now an experienced culture-hater and Glass-lover, I wondered how Reggio's latest film would affect me. The third one, Naqoyqatsi, had been pretty ugly and disappointing, or at least that's how I remember its computer-generated weirdness. But Visitors ended up amazing and hypnotizing me with its surprising simplicity.

For one thing, I had no idea it would all be in black and white. For another, almost the whole film is images of human faces in super slooooow motion. Sounds potentially very dull, I know. But the slowness really makes you pay attention to the minutest of movements and expressions, until humans seem creepily beautiful and endlessly fascinating. As in Koyaanisqatsi, the simple act of distorting time causes you to wonder again and again, "How have I gone this long and missed all this?"

The music is really good, too. There's the usual Philip Glass arpeggiation, but it's slow and varied, rich and beautiful, never veering into the intentionally irritating zone that some of the original film's soundtrack occupied. Quite haunting, really. And then there's the quality of the black and white.

I don't know anything about the special camera that was used to film this movie, but the depth of tone is  truly astounding. It's really what gives the whole viewing experience such a special, eerie quality. All the shadows are a really rich black, and the midtones are darker than usual too. The highlights, on the other hand, are plenty light, yet you don't feel like there's too much contrast. Instead, things (mostly faces) seem to step out of the darkness into a soft, painterly light like Vermeer subjects without their hues. There's maybe a slight purple cast, humanizing things subtly.

When the film was over, I got kind of obsessed with the possibilities of monochromaticity. All my Instagram posts for the next week became about testing the limits of black and white, trying to capture a similarly dark romanticism. I guess those Sable Island horses probably had something to do with this obsession too, now that I think of it. Anyway, here's what I've gotten so far.