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a review by Jeffrey Overstreet

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Andy Goldsworthy is something of an enigma. He is, above all, an artist. He’s is not focusing on pleasing the audience with a performance; he’s exploring questions by making things, with careful attention to excellence, truth, and beauty. His creativity is an investigation.

For those who take the time to look, there are vast rewards. As we watch him work, we enjoy not only the suspense of “How will it end?”, but the added suspense of knowing that even the person in charge doesn’t know what’s going to happen.

Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time is Thomas Riedelsheimer’s quiet affecting documentary on the life and work of an artist quite worthy of our attention. Goldsworthy is unique in many ways. He works in a unique fashion—piecing fragments of nature together into exhibits that express the mysterious and fragile balance of the environment in which he constructs them. But he’s also a refreshing surprise for audiences who have been taught at the movies that artists are primarily drunkards, promiscuous, spouse abusers, drug-abusers, and half-crazy.

Well, okay, maybe he’s a bit crazy.

He does lie down, motionless, throughout a rainstorm, letting the water run across him until it stops. Then he gets up and, presto, he’s left quite an impression.

He spends day after day trying to assemble impossible stacks of crooked, slippery rocks before the river rises to wash them away.

But that’s the wonder of Goldsworthy’s work: he envisions something that seems to defy the laws of nature, and then he just goes for it. And, more often than not, he proves that it is possible. “I enjoy taking a work to the edge of collapse,” he admits.

That’s where the suspense in Rivers and Tides comes from: We watch the effort involved in putting the pieces together, and we feel that exquisite pain when a nearly-finished work suddenly shatters, breaking under a mere breath of wind. He builds complex, gravity-defying walls by joining the tips of twigs; he builds a precariously balanced column of stone that becomes the submerged secret of a rising river; and he braids leaves into long colorful ribbons that wind their way down rivers into oblivion. Goldsworthy is a living testament to the rewards of patience, ambition, attentiveness to and respect for the natural world.

Rivers and Tides gives us an array of scenes and interviews that challenge us with ideas about the relationship between a Creator and his Creation. Just as I’ve begun to worry that a generation is growing up without any idea of the difference between an artist and a crowdpleaser, here is a film that makes that distinction undeniable. Further, as an amateur novelist myself, I am humbled by Goldsworthy’s long-suffering commitment to his work and attention to detail. Even though it is true in any artistic medium, Goldsworthy’s work makes it painfully clear how one misplaced stone can upset the balance of an entire project.

The film also suggests what a wonderful world it could be if we really looked and listened for the language of creation. After this film, I understood better what Scripture is saying when it claims that the mountains declare the Glory of God. These stones do speak, and Goldsworthy teaches us how to listen to them; with touch, with patience, with feverish attention, with playful curiosity. He poses questions to twigs. He challenges boulders. He tests the abilities of balls of red clay in a pool of slow water.

Goldsworthy does not present himself as a Christian, or even particularly interested in God. In fact, his contemplative monologues about his own thought processes have annoyed some of the critics who have written about the film. (After all, the first rule of art is “Show, don’t tell.”)

But Goldsworthy is not one of the innumerable practitioners of New Age psychobabble. He admits his limitations with the spoken word, and often breaks off in mid-sentence, surrendering his attempt to describe what a work means to him. He would rather let the work speak for itself. If the film has a weakness, it is that Riedelsheimer includes too many of these insufficient speeches, and the film feels about ten or fifteen minutes too long.

But as long as the camera stays focused on the work of this visionary Scot, the stuff that happens under his muddy fingers is riveting cinema. The first glimpses of his achievements often inspire a feeling akin to what Moses must have felt when he first stumbled onto the burning bush. Goldsworthy’s not playing to our appetites. He’s aligning things in a frame to draw attention to things we’ve never noticed, things that surprised him too. You can’t help but want to see more. You’ll want Goldsworthy to come over and show you the hidden wonders of your own backyard. And I’m sure he’ll inspire a large crowd of imitators and disciples who will go running into the woods looking for undiscovered patterns, relationships, and places to try out their own hunches.

His work reminds us of an artist’s true focus: a meditative commitment to play, to discovery, and to the celebration of God’s own inventions. It is also a useful metaphor for our lives. Given the short time we have before the tide submerges us, what are we making of our years? What symmetry, what order, what surprise, what balance, and what light are we allowing to shine through before the inevitable, exquisite collapse? And have we developed a sense of the essence that goes on after that shattering? If life is all about survival, what is the point of (to borrow a phrase) all this useless beauty? Whom was it designed to delight, deep in the woods, under the earth, where no human being will ever notice it?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 8:36 am and is filed under Film Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.