A feature length classical music video-cum-political tract (the title is Hopi for "life as war" or "civilized violence"), this is the final work in the Qatsi trilogy by composer Philip Glass and director Godfrey Reggio, an imaginative wordless montage of heavily processed images portraying an imperiled world of rising militarism, morally uncertain technology, financialization and spectatorship, and featuring some of Glass's finest music, including cello by Yo-Yo Ma. Initially widely panned for heedless doomsaying, in the twenty years since its release the global geopolitical condition shows no improvement. "...its best moments offer a sense of motion-picture poetry that will lift receptive viewers out of their seats."  — David Sterritt

PG, 90 min., 2002