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Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time
Metascore
82 out of 100

Universal acclaim - based on 20 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 18 out of 20
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 20
  3. Negative: 0 out of 20
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  1. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: David Sterritt
    100
    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.
  2. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Edward Guthmann
    100
    Enchanting documentary that also serves as an animated gallery of Goldsworthy’s uniquely ephemeral art.
  3. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Michael Sragow
    100
    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.
  4. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Kenneth Turan
    90
    Intoxicating and meditative by turns, helped by Fred Frith's minimalist score, this film opens a portal into a singular creative mind.
  5. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Desson Thomson
    90
    Watch this film. You may never look at nature indifferently again.
  6. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    88
    Watching this movie is like daydreaming.
  7. New York Post
    Reviewed by: V.A. Musetto
    88
    Thoughtful and entertaining documentary.
  8. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Liam Lacey
    88
    A beautiful, probing art documentary.
  9. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: William Arnold
    83
    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.
  10. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    80
    Fred Frith's lovely and subdued score is a perfect accompaniment.
  11. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: David Chute
    80
    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.
  12. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Scott Tobias
    80
    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.
  13. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Ed Halter
    80
    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.
  14. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    80
    As the film's images accumulate, the movie becomes a sustained and ultimately refreshing meditation on surrender to the idea of temporality.
  15. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Alan G. Artner
    75
    I know of no documentary on a contemporary artist that conveys so much about the artist's work so lyrically and directly.
  16. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Christine Temin
    75
    May bring Goldsworthy's art closer than anything else to ''permanence'' in any traditional sense.
  17. Variety
    Reviewed by: Dennis Harvey
    70
    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.
  18. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Kimberley Jones
    67
    The film also inspires, if unconsciously, the viewer to rethink what exactly constitutes art.
  19. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Paul Richard
    60
    The trouble with this art movie is that it's more a movie than it's art.
  20. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Fred Camper
    60
    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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User Reviews

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User Score
9.0 out of 10

Universal acclaim- based on 27 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 20 out of 22
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 22
  3. Negative: 1 out of 22
  1. ValarieB.
    10
    Andy pours his soul into his work and often takes it to the very edge of its collapse. That’s a very beautiful balance.
  2. EvanJ.
    9
    Fantastic representation of an artist whos work is not that easy to understand on a deeper level, and even Goldsworthy seems to understand his work on no more than an instinctual level. The score by Frith is a subtle accompaniment that works well with the subject and towards the end links Goldsworthy back into his roots with a soft celtic tune over views of Scotland.… Full Review »
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