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Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time
Roxie Releasing

Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 82 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
9.1 out of 10
based on 20 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 25 votes
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MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Andy Goldsworthy

Thomas Riedelsheimer's documentary about Scottish sculptor Andy Goldsworthy and his work.


GENRE(S): Documentary  
WRITTEN BY: Thomas Riedelsheimer  
DIRECTED BY: Thomas Riedelsheimer  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: September 28, 2004 
Theatrical: January 2, 2002 
RUNNING TIME: 90 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: Germany 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
In its own quiet, voluptuous way, Rivers and Tides, an unpretentiously brilliant documentary, uses the work of Scottish sculptor Andy Goldsworthy to open up the hidden drama of the natural universe.
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100
San Francisco Chronicle Edward Guthmann
Enchanting documentary that also serves as an animated gallery of Goldsworthy’s uniquely ephemeral art.
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100
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
The film would be more informative if it put Goldsworthy into the broader context of modernist art movements. It's visually ravishing from start to finish, though.
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90
Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Intoxicating and meditative by turns, helped by Fred Frith's minimalist score, this film opens a portal into a singular creative mind.
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90
Washington Post Desson Thomson
Watch this film. You may never look at nature indifferently again.
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88
New York Post V.A. Musetto
Thoughtful and entertaining documentary.
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88
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Watching this movie is like daydreaming.
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88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
A beautiful, probing art documentary.
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83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
Mesmerizing and curiously satisfying idyll that gradually, slyly maneuvers us into a whole new way of looking at the delicate relationship between man, art and Mother Nature.
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80
TV Guide Ken Fox
Fred Frith's lovely and subdued score is a perfect accompaniment.
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80
The New York Times Stephen Holden
As the film's images accumulate, the movie becomes a sustained and ultimately refreshing meditation on surrender to the idea of temporality.
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80
LA Weekly David Chute
Very few art documentaries are as deeply in tune with the spirit of their subjects, and the implications are enormous, since Goldsworthy is the rare contemporary art star whose work (what a radical notion) is actually about something.
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80
Village Voice Ed Halter
Appropriately, Riedelsheimer shoots Goldsworthy's mini-megaliths with a landscape painter's eye; set to Fred Firth's modernist score, some images verge on Kubrick territory.
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80
The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
At times, Goldsworthy's philosophy edges into fuzzy New Age-isms, but with an ever-widening gulf separating humans from their environment, his work demonstrates the enlightening pleasures of reconnecting.
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75
Chicago Tribune Alan G. Artner
I know of no documentary on a contemporary artist that conveys so much about the artist's work so lyrically and directly.
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75
Boston Globe Christine Temin
May bring Goldsworthy's art closer than anything else to ''permanence'' in any traditional sense.
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70
Variety Dennis Harvey
Takes a beautifully lensed look at the work of Scottish "landscape sculptor" Andy Goldsworthy, whose unique creations -- composed of icicles, leaves, sticks, rocks, etc. -- are often as not simply swept away by the next tide or wind gust.
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67
Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones
The film also inspires, if unconsciously, the viewer to rethink what exactly constitutes art.
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60
Chicago Reader Fred Camper
Doesn't add up to much more than a series of pretty pictures, and Goldsworthy's gnomic statements about the "energy" he perceives in "the plants and the land" are never fully explored.
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60
Washington Post Paul Richard
The trouble with this art movie is that it's more a movie than it's art.
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What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 9.1 (out of 10) based on 25 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Valarie B. gave it a10:
Andy pours his soul into his work and often takes it to the very edge of its collapse. That’s a very beautiful balance.

D Carter gave it a10:
To look at the everyday with a different eye. I do needlework and I am trying to incorporate a sense of personal challenge into anything I make. Andy, you are true inspiration.

gayle f. gave it a10:
Fantastic visual journey through the creative mind of a genius in understanding nature. Andy Goldsworthy awareness and reverance of nature is inspirational and spirtual!!!!

Carol D. gave it a 10:
I thought Rivers and Time fabulous. Andy Goldsworthy -- what can I say? He is the artist in us all. He thinks like a philosopher and plays like a child. His work is sublime. I am enchanted with "art" that is ephemeral, or like, Henry Moore's out in the middle of nowhere for no one. As a weaver, I always wanted to do a weaving deep in the woods where no one goes, no one sees. Old age caught up with me before I was able to do it, but it is in a short story of mine, so in a sense it was done. thanks for the viewing. I saw it minutes ago on Movie Plex.

Steven L. gave it a 10:
This moving deserves nothing less than a ten....The visual images are like desert of the highest quality for the soul....It reminds the viewer how important the natural world is as a source of spiritual and artistic enlightenment. Wonderful!!!

AJ Boots gave it a 9:
Mesmerizing. As a movie, it does the best I've seen at letting the viewer see the art in the way the artist conceived it. But the photography goes a step beyond merely viewing to expand the viewpoint by focusing on the lyrical and the stony/muddy context of these "earthworks."

Chandan N. gave it a 9:
This is an excellent documentary of Goldsworthy's techinique and philosophy. There are two upsetting aspects to the film, however. The director found some reason to domesticate Goldsworthy in a scene in the artist's kitchen. It was totally superfluous and revealed more about Goldsworthy as being less than ideal as a parent and husband, with his wife tending kitchen and his numerous children scurrying about. The second disappointment was Fred Frith's succumbing to the pop-American tendency to "Orientalize" bucolic scences with ethnically appropriate music, cf. sheep shearing and "Gaelic"-sounding music. Other than that, it is a brilliantly executed film.

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