Thursday, March 20, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Film: For art's sake, dive into Rivers and Tides, the ultimate art movie

By Anthony Allison

"We perceive it as being a woolly animal and to get through that woolliness to the essence of the sheep is very hard."

--Andy Goldsworthy

Don't laugh. Resist the overwhelming urge to scoff. Try not to shout that the emperor has no clothes when you encounter the woolly philosophical pronouncements of artsy-fartsy types.

Midway through Rivers and Tides, Thomas Riedelsheimer's profile of "land artist" Andy Goldsworthy, the Scottish sculptor haltingly delivers a perfectly obtuse explanation of his work: "I struggle to say these things...but there's a world beyond what words can define for me. Words do their job but what I'm doing here says a lot more."

In short, the work of this mad highland maverick--who improvises elaborate sculptures in natural settings from materials such as rocks, twigs, leaves and even icicles--defies adequate description. So this truly eye-opening film, subtitled "Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time," literally has to be seen (preferably on the big screen) to be believed.

Before you dismiss the ludicrous idea of sitting through a 90-minute documentary about some demented Scot collecting piles of old driftwood, hold up. Remember that play about the guy who astounds his friends by paying a small fortune for a totally white canvas (Yasmina Reza's aesthetic allegory Art). Reflect on MGM's golden age, when the star-studded studio's product still justified being heralded by a lion's roar and the proud motto Ars gratia artis.

If ever a film exemplified the concept of "art for art's sake," it's Rivers and Tides. This strangely compelling documentary is the ultimate art movie. Yet it's the diametric opposite of the avant-garde garbage that offputting term so often implies.

Goldsworthy's inspiration comes from the ebb and flow of the tide, the languid undulations of a stream, and the "deeper rhythm of change" this visionary sees around him. But like the proverbial tree that falls in the woods with no witness, his creations are effectively nonexistent, and certainly pointless, unless they're photographed. Some are ephemeral: intricate arrangements of leaves blown away by the wind, a driftwood igloo taken by the rising tide, iron-rich red-rock pigment flowing like blood in a stream. The meaning of other, more solid, projects (egg-shaped cairns, a massive "river" of stone walls "flowing" through a forest) only becomes clear over time.

In Riedelsheimer, Goldsworthy miraculously found the perfect collaborator. The German filmmaker fully grasps the Scotsman's offbeat vision ("Seeing something you never saw before that was always there"). Inventively deploying familiar filmmaking techniques (floating crane-dolly shots, seamlessly smooth time-lapse photography), he not only captures the ineffable essence of Goldsworthy's art, he amplifies and enhances it.

By the end of the film, you understand that stone is fluid and that void--a hole conjured up in midair by some gravity-defying collection of twigs or stone--is paradoxically full of meaning. You also learn, in passing, about the woolly essence of sheep and the profound impact these "incredibly powerful animals" (or, rather, their wealthy owners) have had on both people and landscape.

More magically, on a frigid coastline in Nova Scotia Goldsworthy doggedly forges a strange, serpentine creation by sticking bits of icicle on a rock. "The very thing that brings the work to life is the thing that will cause its death," he proclaims portentously as the sun slowly rises. Later he adds, "When I make a work I often take it to the very edge of its collapse. And that's a very beautiful balance." Like every other verbal pronouncement in this beautiful, mesmerizing film, that's a gross understatement.