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.