The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, January 27-February 2
Directed by Godfrey Reggio
This wordless essay film converts handwringing social commentary into poetry, combing sights from around the world to celebrate the dizzying complexity of the planet and how we fit into its jigsaw design. Though future variations on the same theme would fatally expose the limits of its moral judgment of pure nature and debased technological growth, the original remains a kaleidoscopic marvel. The images are resplendent and epically scaled, but the film gains its true power from Philip Glass’s score. Akin to a gradually dying music box, the soundtrack warps and distends all the way through the haunting, protracted final shot of humanity’s Icarian ascent cut brutally, explosively short. Jake Cole (January 29, 7pm at the Museum of the Moving Image’s “See It Big! Documentary”)