Godfrey Reggio makes the kind of movies I think Terrence Malick longs to make.
While Malick has already rejected story and plot, as well as dialogue, character development and, occasionally, even characters, he’s never made a film where he ignored all of these things completely.
And that’s all that Reggio has made. His newest, “Visitors,” another film in which his images are set to – and illuminated by – the music of Philip Glass, is, in its own way, as impressionist and oblique as such earlier efforts as “Koyaanisqatsi” and the other films in the “-qatsi” trilogy.
Reggio generally works in individual images; none are directly connected to the others (though, in this film, that’s not always the case). Each image has a certain power, though that power is not always obvious. Reggio, however, is that endangered species: a filmmaker willing to take his time onscreen. So each of the black-and-white images in “Visitors” lingers, virtually unmoving, for at least 30 seconds, sometimes longer than a minute.
This review continues on my website.