The Qatsi Trilogy, with Philip Glass Ensemble @ Edinburgh Playhouse

The Qatsi trilogy has been described as a one-idea film series, the idea being that we're fucking up our planet. Watched consecutively over three nights, as I, along with hundreds of other festival-goers, have at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival, it’s hard to disagree. But to dismiss Godfrey Reggio’s sublime vision because of its thematic monotony would be churlish: its rapturous visuals and daring non-narrative form more than compensate for its political simplicity.

The series begins in great style on Saturday (13 August) with stoner classic Koyaanisqatsi: Life out of Balance (1983). Moving from an unspoiled American wilderness to the frenzied madness of New York, Reggio’s film grammar is perfectly attuned to his subject, with nature's epic grandeur captured in a sweeping panoramic and time-lapsed sky, while the frenzied urban rat race is a whizzing blur of rushing commuters and motorways of hallucinatory red-and-white automotive lighting. Philip Glass’ minimalist score, meanwhile, continues to ratchet, becoming more frantic as Reggio’s images shift into hyperactive overdrive. It is at once beautiful and apocalyptic, with Glass' haunting sounds, performed live by Glass and his ensemble, the perfect accompaniment to the film's cold brilliance.

Where Koyaanisqatsi shows technology's hold over the West, its 1988 follow-up, Powaqqatsi: Life in Transition, which screened Sunday (14 August), takes us on an odyssey across the developing world. Time-lapse is eschewed for super slow-motion and percussion is introduced to Glass’ soundscape, adding depth and rhythm. It’s a more humane film: individuals only appear in Koyaanisqatsi towards its final moments, but Powaqqatsi is a celebration of the human face and form, filled with heroic vignettes of people at work and at play. Technology and consumerism are still Reggio’s enemies, but his mode of attack this time is satire: Indian women in traditional Hindi apparel wearing ostentatious sunglasses or a montage of sexed-up '80s advertising being two examples of the film's sardonic swipe at modernity.

Unfortunately the trilogy’s 2002 finale, Naqoyqatsi: Life as war, which screened Monday (15 August), is a damp squib. Using on-the-nose text and graphics, it's an idiots’ salad of rotorscoped archive footage and sub-screensaver CGI that resembles a millennium-bug fever dream. Equally uninspired is Glass’ music, which is dominated by dreary cello cadenzas that offer none of the vibrancy of the earlier scores' funky keyboard solos.

But Glass deserves the standing ovation he receives at each performance of his three-night Playhouse residency. This trilogy is cinema at its boldest and most awe-inspiring, and it was all the more thrilling for having its composer in attendance, quietly hunched over his keyboard bringing life to his compositions – ably accompanied by his talented ensemble – while the beauty of nature and the follies of humankind played out on screen above him.