NO SURPRISE that there’s no commentary track to this long-running 2003 Seattle favorite (released on DVD Sept. 28), since British environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy says almost nothing while creating his handmade work. Words are somehow gratuitous to the ephemeral, natural forms he crafts out of stones, ice, leaves, twigs, and earth. When done (assuming they don’t topple over or collapse during the process—which does elicit the occasional groan from Goldsworthy), they’re documented with photographs, not paragraphs. Few of his installations are meant to be permanent; he’s designed meandering stone walls in upstate New York, pinecone-shaped roadside cairns in Italy, and beehivelike edifices in the rooftop sculpture garden of N.Y.C.’s Metropolitan Museum. But most of his work is assembled from found materials in Scotland, where it’s washed away by the next rain.
If you saw the film last year, there’s little new to add in the way of extras. Seven new shorts are included by the same director (Thomas Riedelsheimer), probably intended to augment Goldsworthy’s gallery shows. Some repeat and amplify creations we’ve seen before, while others are entirely new. When prompted, Goldsworthy speaks of the “dialogue” between his creations and their environment. His aim is to construct “not arbitrary forms that are imposed . . . I think of it as growth.” In this way, leaf or stone creations take pattern by process of accrual, painstakingly arranged by the artist’s battered fingers as if to arise organically from the natural setting.
Watching Rivers and Tides makes for a fairly calming, meditative experience—it’s all about “flow” and entropy, the passage of time. Fortunately, neither the man nor his works tends toward the New Agey. “I think we misread the landscape when we think of it as being pastoral and pretty,” says Goldsworthy. The movie makes you want to go out for a walk in the rain to poke sticks in the mud, which is actually high praise—you never know where you’ll find inspiration.
Brian Miller
OUT OCT. 5, a two-disk edition of Disney’s Aladdin, with deleted scenes, one new song, and a “pop-up video trivia” mode; The Day After Tomorrow, with deleted natural calamities; the Mandy Moore Christian high-school satire Saved!, with 16 minutes of lost scenes; a collector’s edition of The Untouchables, with a Sean Connery performance that no one can touch; all eight Friday the 13th slasheramas, with 10-plus hours of bonus material; and Joanne Woodward’s finest hour, The Three Faces of Eve.
Eds.
