Rivers and Tides

This was not a film I was terribly interested in seeing. From all description it sounded terribly dry and boring to risk my $9 on. I hedged back and forth on whether or not to join the group and see the movie, but a good bout of bad weather twisted my arm and I decided to give it a chance, and I'm very glad I did so.

Rivers and Tides is a documentary which follows Scottish "land-artist" Andy Goldsworthy to the creation of several installations and pieces of his unique art. Goldsworthy's current interest seems to be displaying how time can be used in an artistic setting, and he explores this concept with the many pieces documented in this film. He constructs beautiful sinusoidal sculptures with painstakingly placed bits of icicle and then watches it slowly fall apart as the sun rises and begins to melt the joints. Another piece was an almost spiderweb/spirograph form built out of blades of grass and reeds. I found that what sounded very dry on paper turned out to be breathtakingly beautiful when witnessed on screen.
One of the things that struck me most, however, was that several times in the film, Goldsworthy would be well into the construction of one of his pieces when the entire thing would collapse around him. The aforementioned reed/grass assembly being one of them. While these collapses were probably very frustrating to the artist, I found them some of the most beautiful imagery in the film (not to belittle the beauty of his successes).
I really can't recommend this movie enough, and unlike most documentaries, I feel that this one really deserves the big-screen treatment.