Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time
Director: Thomas Riedelsheimer
Year Released: 2001
Rating: 3.0
Enchanting look at the work of British land artist Andy Goldsworthy as he basically walks around nature, collects items and uses them to make spectacular designs and shapes (like pools of red-tinted water made from smashing apart rocks or gigantic rock sculptures and walls) and how most of his work will be eroded or changed by nature itself. Riedelsheimer's treatment is a tad overtly cinematic (and some of the music can be a bit much), but ever-philosophizing Goldsworthy is a wonderful subject who is quite aware of the various 'meanings' that can be attached to his projects: that nature is a co-creator of the work, that life is ephemeral, that beauty is everywhere (and so on, but the artist himself is given ample time to muse on the 'larger' implications of what he 'does'). I personally found the scenes with Goldsworthy around (and interacting with) other people - in a diner in New York, at his kitchen table with his (then) wife and children - to be just as intriguing in their own minute way as him working in the woods: around other people he looks a smidge uncomfortable, and by his own admission he prefers to be alone.
