Film Reviews

The Letter R is for . . . I have no idea

0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z - €5

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Russian Ark
[Aleksandr Sokurov, , 2002, cert], Dec03

A loving paean to Mother Russia, a sadness permeates this astonishing if ultimately dull film. Sokurov contrives an account of the legacy of the Russian people through a series of tableau vivant played out within the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. Concentrating on the rich cultural inheritance of his people, Sokurov’s film deploys a cast of thousands as his camera makes one gigantic movement through the museum, following its would be locator as he discusses the people, the art and the history. Now when I say one movement, I mean one movement, Sokurov has contrived a film constructed from but one shot. His cast of characters and the vast interior of The Hermitage is unfolded before teh sedate and stately progress of his camera through this new

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I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. . . sorry, wrong life!

Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time
[90 ], Nov03

A documentary film following the work of noted artist Andy Goldsworthy, this is tidy study of the man at work in four different locations, one of them his Scottish home of Penpont. This film has a warm and gentle relationship with a man who seems at peace with his art and not too distracted by the whys and wherefores of the film-making. He holds himself at a distance form teh camera, not aloof but just not too engaged with his audience. The impresion is of a man absorbed with his own creativity, his own engagement with the land and the beautiful forms he creates out of his immediate environments: ice sculptures with a life of a few hours under winter sun; stone cairns that disappear benath the monumental Novia Scotian tidal reach; the changing face of drying clay as moisture inserts new meaning into its facade; delicate daisy chains of leaf and twig that float upon the water or the air.

Former Henry Cow luminary and all round avant garde rockista Fred Friths provides a vaguely familair soundscape that neatly echoes the Goldsworty's work. Not perhaps the greatest possible film this is a solid and workaday account that deserves your time and mine. Goldsworthy's mildly taciturn nature becomes part of his chram as the film shows you just how committed to his own need to create he is. I came away from this film with a desire to make myself, to nurture my own soul in the creation of my relationship with the world. That Goldsworthy realises his relationship with object that we can all access, pebbles on a beach, Autumn's fall makes it all the better.

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