Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Skunkyrate Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Matylda Swan It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Seamus2829 I first saw this absolutely riveting documentary in it's initial release back in 2001,and it really had a profound effect on me, so much that I bugged several of my friends to see it with me on repeat screenings. The bottom line:none of my friends walked away disappointed (ever!). This stellar film is about Scottish conceptual artist, Andy Goldsworthy,who creates some absolutely beautiful pieces of art using natural materials (wood,water,flowers,rocks,etc.)to create pieces that eventually return to their natural form (a statement in the temporary state of everything?). We get to see Goldsworthy create several works of temporary art,as well as some of his long term installations in major galleries around the world,as well as a few pieces in the natural world,as well. German film maker,Thomas Riedelsheimer directs,photographs & edits this meditation on the creative process that is a real treat for both the eye & ear (with an ambient musical score,composed & performed by Fred Frith,who's music is generally edgy experimental/noise textured guitar,as well as a capable ensemble of musicians). Although this film has been available on DVD for some years now,if you can find a cinema that is highlighting a revival of this fine film,by all means,seek it out (it's easily a film that was composed for the large screen,with a proficient sound system to truly experience this film the right way). No MPAA rating,but contains nothing to offend (unless the live birth of a sheep on screen is destined to offend or disturb)

Michael DeZubiria I admit that for the first 20 minutes or so of this film I wasn't entirely sure I was going to sit through the whole thing. Like many other people, I found it pretty boring, and I wasn't entirely looking forward to an hour and a half of watching this guy bite icicles and stick them together. However, if you sit through the creation of his first work long enough to see the finished product, you get an idea of how impressive the rest of the film is. I really think it's sad that so many people found this impossibly boring or a retread of ideas done by other artists. Rivers and Tides is a quiet study of some of the artwork and methods of Andy Goldsworthy, who makes his art entirely out of things in nature, generally resulting in pieces that will be consumed by nature through the normal process of entropy. It is slow moving and unglamorous, but I think that a lot of the point of the movie is to show that Goldsworthy's art does not need any accompaniment in order for it to be appreciated. I've even heard people complain about how he is always talking throughout the movie, rather than just letting nature and his artwork speak for themselves, which I just think is madness.On the other hand, lots of people complain about CDs coming with the lyrics written out inside them. A lot of musicians as well think their music should mean whatever the listener wants it to mean without the musician showing the exact lyrics, I guess I'm just the kind of person that believes that I'd like to know what the artist was trying to accomplish with his or her artwork. I can still take it how I want to even if I know what it was meant to do. I can understand not wanting to hear him talk through the movie. He does, after all, lose his train of thought and find himself unable to explain some of his work at more than one occasion, but if you don't want Goldsworthy talk about his art while you're watching the film, feel free to turn the sound off. That's like not reading the lyrics if you don't want to know what a musician is singing and would rather interpret the words yourself.I think that Andy Goldsworthy's work, which I had no idea existed before I watched this movie, is incredibly impressive, and I'm glad that this film was made in order to showcase it. Indeed, since his work is generally not the kind that can be transported into a studio, photography is the only medium other than film that can express it, and I really appreciated being able to see the work that goes into his art, and the way that only things from nature are used. Whether or not you appreciate certain aspects of how this film is presented, Goldsworthy's work is moving enough to overlook that, because the film is not the star, Goldsworthy's art is. And given the lack of any music or even the smallest special effects and the slow-moving nature of the film, it seems to me that director Thomas Riedelsheimer knows that.

fonzie3b So, not being a poet myself, I have no real way to convey the beauty and simplicity of this documentary. The effortless motion of Goldsworthy, as he molds natures beauty into his own work is captivating. Watch him stick reeds together in a web hanging from a tree in a close up for a few minutes while he speaks of his work, and then receive the payoff when the camera cuts to the wide shot. Be amazed by the ease with which he operates and then realize the futility when a slight breeze knocks down the entire web. The genius of Goldsworthy seemingly knows no bounds as his inspiration is nature itself. It is in the essential change of nature where his work, though complete in its own sphere, is made whole.

Chris Knipp I finally saw `Rivers and Tide.' I want to say that as an artist I'm happy that at least in the San Francisco area this documentary is having a long and successful run. It's nice that a film about an artist, one that gets close to him and his work, is reaching people so successfully. It's a nice film, and it creates a sort of warm and pleasant feeling for the engaging and dedicated Andy Goldsworthy, the 47-year-old Scottish artist who makes perishable environmental pieces whom this doc is exclusively concerned with. My friend Spencer thought `Rivers and Tides' was unbelievably boring. He's not so far off: this is a very quiet and repetitious film. There are, moreover, times when the viewing experience is like watching paint dry. But this is not a condemnation on my part. Samuel Beckett's plays and novels are almost unbearably boring and yet I consider him a genius and perhaps the greatest playwright in English of the twentieth century. But let us bear in mind that `Rivers and Tides' is not very exciting and that since Goldsworthy is largely repeating the same sorts of pieces over and over again, it's very repetitious. His strings of leaves, or hair, or wool, or his wreathes of sticks, or ice, or his piles of rocks in cone shapes, or circles, or spirals, or lines, are done over and over, and the film focuses constantly on Goldsworthy working on piece after similar piece. It is clearly the desire of Thomas Riedelsheimer, the filmmaker, to stay out in the wilds of nature in Nova Scotia or New York State or Scotland where the artist spends his time, and not to take us to the world of dealers and galleries which he largely avoids (though they still promote and support him), nor to bring in a host of critics or admirers to talk about him.It's ironic though since Andy Goldsworthy himself says there are so many things he can't express -- he breaks down in his explanations more than once -- and that the work says it so much better than he can, the documentarian nonetheless chooses to have him almost constantly talking throughout the film. Since the pieces are about nature and its forces, why not let nature speak with its own voice instead of having the artist natter on? He spouts a lot of commonplaces about how you have to take time to watch things change, how deep the forces of nature are, and on and on. His pieces are often stunningly beautiful, as shown in books; why doesn't the film show more of those beauties close up, framed for a moment in time, as Goldsworthy's own stills do?Instead it focuses first off on several of his failures, on piles of stones that collapsed into a heap over and over. These moments are telling, though, because they show the patience and endurance of the man. His face is soft and sweet. He is really a very dear fellow, dedicated to his work and drawing satisfaction and knowledge directly from it. He has a lovely family, a wife and three or four small kids living in a rural Scottish town. I don't know much about them because the filmmaker treats them as mere furniture, relentless in his focus on the artist and his works. We only see enough of them to know he has a family at all and also to see that this isn't just saintly doodling of a hermit out in the woods but that the man has a `home base,' a nice house, a staff, a huge file, and all the systematic organization of work and its records that goes with being a highly successful and indeed internationally known artist. Basically Goldsworthy, whose work is nonetheless worthy, is a recycler of the earthworks and environmental art of the Sixties and Seventies. He is not a pioneer like Michael Heizer, or like Robert Smithson, whose `Spiral Jetty' his pieces sometimes echo. He has none of the human interaction and social consciousness of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. He goes off by himself. He's gentle with nature; his pieces are generally meant to collapse and fade back into the environment from whence they came. When the film shows a highway in New York State with semi's rolling on it, you're jolted back to reality. Goldsworthy is generally so cut off from the public and from our times in his work, so touchy-feely and spiritual in his ponderings, that he could be living in the Fifties, and this could be one of the excellent artist documentaries that were made at that time, were it not for the fact that he needed the forerunners of environmental art to come before him. `Rivers and Tides' is a gentle piece, a nice date movie for couples in their fifties or sixties. It's uncontroversial, peaceful, and soothing. It's a travelogue without boring natives or national problems. It's a nature exploration film without environmental issues or deaths or illnesses or injuries-the worst thing that happens to the artist is that he gets chilly and scrapes his fingers or that his piece falls over unfinished after hours of work and he almost wants to cry. He makes his delicate networks of icicles with his bare hands, because he has to be able to feel the ice to do the piece. He may be a famous guy now, with commissions that provide enough to have a team of ten or more resurfacing an interior in Digne, France with Scottish mud mixed with Scottish human hair or building curly stone walls in New York State, but he stays honest by going out and making his pieces himself and, from the sound of it (the film doesn't tell us anything that Andy Goldsworthy doesn't mention himself) he still photographs them himself, and most people who haven't seen a gallery installation know his work from the big books of photographs that have kept coming out over the last decade or so. The film documents the making of the pieces, trying to cover a lot of them and therefore not gong into great depth about any. But would we want to see full coverage of six hours of trying to make pile of stones stay together, and falling down four times in a row?Not that there are not beauties in the film. The end, when Goldsworthy is throwing things in the air and letting them fall into the water, are stunning gentle natural explosions. (The music by is unobtrusive and sometimes beautiful.) But the fact is that the images in `Rivers and Tides' cannot compete with the stills in Andy's books as expressions of the aesthetic beauty of his work. Nor are, ultimately, his words necessary for those who truly look.