The New Year Quote by Godfrey Reggio

Reggio is describing an artistic stance that sounds anti-critical but is really anti-performative. He is not claiming immunity from audience reaction; he is insisting that the work can’t be built out of anticipated reactions without turning into a counterfeit of itself. The quote is all verbs and pressure: “cant think,” “trying,” “bring,” “realize,” “struggle,” “process.” That syntax matters. It frames filmmaking less as self-expression than as self-interrogation, where the director is chasing clarity he doesn’t yet possess.

The key word is “resolution,” which carries a double charge: emotional closure and formal completion. Reggio’s films (especially the wordless, image-and-music-driven Koyaanisqatsi lineage) aren’t arguments laid out in sentences; they’re experiences engineered to land in the nervous system. In that context, “resolution” reads as an attempt to reconcile contradictions modern life keeps open - awe and dread, beauty and extraction, speed and meaning. Critics, with their need to pin down “the point,” can feel like a gravitational pull toward premature explanation.

The subtext is that the artist is also a viewer, arriving at understanding at the same time as the audience. “Realize that myself” quietly demotes the director from omniscient author to participant, someone using the film to metabolize an unease he can’t tidy up in advance. “It’s a struggle” isn’t romantic suffering; it’s an admission that the work’s final shape is the residue of wrestling with uncertainty. The process “gets us this”: not a product designed to win approval, but a hard-won artifact of attention.