Oddly, perhaps, there were moments during the screening of Godfrey Reggio's brilliant and influential-beyond-measure 1983 masterpiece when I had to consciously drag my eyes back to the ravishing images on the big screen.

I was mesmerised by the activity among the 12 on-stage musicians, led from one of four keyboards by Michael Riesman and including the composer, Philip Glass.

Often their busy-ness was – to use an overloaded term – minimal, and Glass and vocalist Lisa Bielawa spent much of the evening watching the screen, but it was fascinating to watch the familiar score with its mechanical pulse and alternating currents being performed by flesh-and-blood musicians. The execution of the music was, as near as makes no odds, flawless, and the sound quality in the Playhouse was superb.

The images, on the other hand, are perhaps showing their age in these days of high-definition and 3D and that is a bit of shame. It eventually ceased to matter, but initially I wanted to screen to be bigger and sharper. Remarkably the content has hardly dated at all, beyond a few hairstyles and fashions. Cars, cityscapes, transport systems and industrial processes are all very familiar, set against natural landscapes that still take the breath away.

What is different is the experience and attitude we bring to looking at them, which is why Reggio has been down-playing the political intent of his work. It is how the viewer thinks about the world that colours these pictures and the soundtrack. That universality will never date a piece of work that, beyond doubt, deserves the label “masterpiece”.

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