Metacritic reviews

Godfrey Reggio's Powaqqatsi is just like his Koyaanisqatsi, only different. Its dreamlike mix of forceful imagery and Philip Glass' surging, unique music is the same, but the dream is different, and Reggio uses different techniques to incarnate it. [08 Jul 1988, p.F13]

In Powaqqatsi, Reggio addresses the impoverished inhabitants of the southern hemisphere that are exploited in order to power the Metropolis-like nightmare that he made of American society in Koyaanisqatsi, and it has a stunning opening.

Godfrey Reggio’s Powaqqatsi, like his earlier “Koyaanisqatsi,” is a lyrical documentary that turns the instruments of technology against it. In some ways, the new film is less effective, but it’s also more visually spectacular: a mesmerizing cascade of sensuous sights and sounds.

Powaqqatsi, which is the second part of a planned trilogy, reaffirms Mr. Reggio's diligence and sincerity, though it does not signficantly advance his achievement.

The second film seems less purposeful: The shots of squalor and industrialization-run-amok have an almost random feel. At times, however, it's still incredibly powerful.

Like its predecessor Koyaanisqatsi, Reggio's wordless eco-doc is visually stunning, but undermined by a fairly serious flaw.

There are images of astonishing beauty in Godfrey Reggio's Powaqqatsi, sequences when we marvel at the sights of the Earth, and yet when the film is over there is the feeling that we are still waiting for it to begin.

Watching it, you feel as if you were being forced at gunpoint to flip through hundreds and hundreds of back issues of National Geographic.

Much like the "new age" music of its Philip Glass score, "Powaqqatsi" occupies an uncomfortable space somewhere between the aggressively avant-garde and the lullingly banal. [13 May 1988, p.J]

For all its pretension, Powaqqatsi is a confused work -- both a compeling analysis of underdeveloped nations and a self-indulgent exercise in cinematic drudgery. [24 Jun 1988, p.C5]