This is my first time watching a movie like this. Some of the shots are quite pretty, mesmerizing, whatever word you want to use; but it's obvious to me why this is the most obscure in its tiny genre of "look at the world" movies. Images like those of the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, the Pyramids of Egypt, etc., aren't just bland and familiar, they're plain boring, when they're trying so hard to feel awestriking. Shots like the people coming down the escalator or the slow-mo time lapses (oxymoron?) from inside buildings are worse then boring; they're bad, slowing the flow of the movie to a sticky crawl, and demanding you contemplate THEMES and BIG IDEAS and THE NATURE OF THE HUMAN CONDITION ITSELF... instead of showing you beautiful images and having their brilliance, thematic or otherwise hit you naturally. Structurally, it's weak as well. The movie repeatedly juxtaposes approx. ten minutes of plodding, slower images of nature, monuments, sculptures, etc., with three to four-minute long epileptic fits of humanity and the hustle-bustle of life, meant to exhilarate (whereas they really only fail to bore) only to end in something that sounds like an explosion and lapse back into neutral position. The movie doesn't really end, either, in the sense that it "concludes;" it finishes, it dones, it overs. Ultimately I know that this is a style of film I could enjoy if done very well. In that way, I feel much more excited at the prospect of watching Koyaanisqatsi or Samsara than I do at rewatching this movie.
Review of Chronos
