Chronos (1985) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	IMAX	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1985
Running Time	42:46 (Case: 40)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Ron Fricke
Studio Distributor	Miramar Simitar DVD	Starring	None Given
Case	Jewel
RPI	$24.95	Music	Michael Stearns

    For those of you not familiar with Koyaanisqatsi, I would strongly urge you to track it down as well as the sequel Powaqqatsi (1988), though they may be hard to find these days. As far as I know, neither film is available on DVD or video as of 15 January 2001. I have an old PAL video of Koyaanisqatsi bought in the UK over 12 years ago - I suspect this is long out of print although there are rumours that Koyaanisqatsi may be out on DVD in Australia in the near future.

    Both Chronos and Koyaanisqatsi share a common set of characteristics. Basically, the films consist of a sequence of beautifully shot images and scenes of natural landscapes juxtaposed with shots of man-made constructions and human activity, accompanied by music but no dialogue, kind of like a wordless documentary. The set of images and scenes can be in real-time, slow motion or speeded up (using time lapse photography).

    The opening set of images are all consistent with the overall theme of time or the passage of time. Shots of the Grand Canyon (a landscape created through the actions of a river over time) are juxtaposed with Stonehenge (speculated amongst other things to be used for measuring time). I particularly liked the camera doing a fly-by across the river at the bottom of the canyon, and the time-lapse shot of Stonehenge is particularly appropriate to the theme of the film. These scenes are juxtaposed with each other, as well as with brief shots of statues and the busy traffic through and across New York City's Park Avenue.

    We are then taken on a wordless travelogue across the ruins and monuments of ancient civilizations in Egypt, Greece and Rome. About half-way through the film, we enter a set of scenes taken at various locations in Paris that is curiously reminiscent of the "Grid" section of Koyaanisqatsi - they build up from slow pans to various scenes of human activities and there is a gradual speed-up of the photography until towards the end there is a frenzied mania of fast forward motion accompanied by an equally frenzied musical score. The film then introduces similar scenes of New York City, Los Angeles and ends with a frenzied "ride" across LA freeways and Venice canals.

    The cinematography is breathtakingly beautiful and impressive, and no doubt will look really good at an IMAX cinema. However, I feel that Chronos is a very poor cousin compared to the thematically much stronger and thought-provoking Koyaanisqatsi.

Video

    This is one of the earliest DVDs released but the quality of the transfer is surprisingly quite acceptable. Sharpness, detail, colour saturation, and shadow detail are all quite acceptable.

    The film source is also relatively free of grain and marks. The transfer rate is consistently high (8-9Mb/s) yielding an above average video transfer relatively free of MPEG artefacts, apart from some slight shimmering in the stained glass windows at 20:20 and 21:05.

    The Ultimate DVD Platinum disc also contains a brief extract from Chronos. This seems to be sourced from a different transfer. The quality of the transfer in the extract is far superior to the quality of the transfer on this disc and I wish I could see the entire film like this. Curiously, though, the increased sharpness and detail of the transfer in the extract makes the film grain more visible.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    As the audio track is in 2 channels, the surround channels and sub-woofer are not activated during the presentation. However, if you can force your audio decoder to apply Dolby Pro-Logic decoding on the PCM stream, you should be able to recover some surround information as the film was originally released with a dbx 6 channel audio track so I'm hoping the audio track may be Dolby Surround encoded. On my system, I can detect some ambience reproduced in the surround speakers when I switch Dolby Pro Logic decoding on.

    The extract featured on the Ultimate DVD Platinum disc comes with DTS, Dolby Digital and Dolby Surround audio tracks. These sound much better than the audio track on this disc.

    The music by Michael Stearns has a vague New Age feel about it, and is quite listenable and enjoyable. It isn't the same as the music Philip Glass featured in Koyaanisqatsi, which can either be good or bad depending on whether you like Philip Glass or not.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall