Nearly a year ago, San Francisco's tough, little, independent Roxie Theater was in a dire financial condition. Backed by local film makers, it had premiered and distributed excellent, on occasion, very successful indie films -- i.e., RED ROCK WEST (Dahl, 1993, which harbinged the rise of Nicolas Cage as a major leading man). But, by last Spring, the implosion of dot-com hopes, plus rising rents in the still (and newly) prosperous area around Valencia and 16th Street, was forcing the managers into bankruptcy. In desperation, they called in their markers.

The result was a widely attended benefit program [Peter Bogdanovich brought THE LAST PICTURE SHOW], and the West Coast commercial theatrical premieres of two controversial movies: BLOODY SUNDAY (Greenglass, 2002) and RIVERS AND TIDES: ANDY GOLDSWORTHY WORKING WITH TIME (Riedelsheimer, 2001). No two films could have been more un-alike. Yet, running separately and alternately over weeks and months, they saved the Roxie, for the time being, at least. Each had its loyal and tenacious audience, sometimes overlapping: The Social Activists and The Artistic Community.

BLOODY SUNDAY, a feature about the British Derry Massacre in Northern Ireland, dealt with masses of people in ethnic, political and religious conflict, and it appealed to the City's large old and new Irish population, as well as traditional elements of the Left and those interested in Civil Rights. RIVERS AND TIDES, a winning documentary of the San Francisco Film Festival Golden Gate Award, was written, directed, photographed and edited by one man (Thomas Riedelsheimer), and its concern was basically with one almost unique artist, an Englishman of Jewish descent, abiding in Scotland, struggling quietly with time and the elements to create gorgeous yet ephemeral art.

The two films went on to open around America, and both are still in return-runs at various theaters in the Bay Area.

Moving and anger-making as BLOODY SUNDAY is, of the two, I found RIVERS AND TIDES the more striking, perhaps because until recently, it seemed easier, as it has been to an extent for decades, that Americans shake their fists at a British oppressor, and raise money and pints to "the brave lads," rather than also take stands against our own increasing aggression, at home and abroad. RIVERS AND TIDES, on the other hand, has no overt political message, no academic artistic snobbery, no sensational message to convey. Andy Goldsworthy, in his pawky, brilliant way, represents us all -- if we care to look around us.

"Environmental Sculptor" Goldsworthy narrates the film, often in answer to the German Director Riedelsheimer's off-camera questions; a process occasionally punctuated by Fred Frith's poignant music (usually when Chance or the Elements are descending on a work of Art). Goldsworthy is a quiet, reflective 46 year-old man, with curly greying hair and the hands of a bricklayer. He works for his Art, and against Time.

How does that make him unique, or different from other artists? you may ask.

Goldsworthy has constructed his reputation by creating works that may have an existence from hundreds of years to only a few minutes.

He speaks to us as he works. We see him toiling with crofters to restore an ancient traditional Scottish drystone sheep corral. Or carefully using his breath to cement icicles into the form of a shining multidimensional star. Or again, he laboriously lays rowan leaves, or perhaps wildflower petals, in the form of a mandala on a blow hole by the sea. Or, on a moor, like a mother bird, he meticulously weaves a vertical thatch nest of sticks and twigs. Or wielding a sharp hard stone in Spring, he chips from softer rock a large stone egg, which he leaves in a ditch by a road, where summer weeds will obscure it. Or he grinds his own dyes from lichens and mineral-bearing rocks, as the old Scottish weavers did, to hue his projects. Or, employing natural pastes, he fashions a long coiled snake from Autumn leaves and sets the serpent asail on a creek. As the current catches its sinews, sweeping it into the river, the snake uncoils to swim on quite magically, until destroyed in the shoals downstream.

And all the while, he comments on what he is doing, and why he is doing it. Goldsworthy, like ourselves, is in a contest with Time. All things, living or inert, are part of a process involving disintegration or decay, even in the moment of their creation. As he tells us, he uses whatever he finds to create his projects: Ice -- but it melts. Leaves in "leaf-fall" -- but they wash or blow away. Sand or dirt -- but it falls apart. Stone -- but even stone cleaves and weathers.

We see him at his lonely creation on the moors of Scotland, on the rocky shores of Nova Scotia, at an ancient wall in France, building a long sinuous stone wall in Upper New York State.

Goldsworthy also sits, in one sequence, talking with his wife and children, in an ample wood-paneled kitchen of the old stone house in the village of Penpont, Dumfriesshire, where he has lived with them since 1985. He gazes on his family with the same love, wonder and slight practical sadness that he does his work.

But, if many of Goldsworthy's pieces melt, decay or are swept away after he effectuates them, how does he support his family? you ask. The answer is that, as his reputation has ripened, he takes pictures of his evanescent objets d'art. They hang in shows among the great museums of the World, and the pictures are reproduced in "coffee table" books by the renowned Abrams art publishers of New York. They have made him, given his simple tastes, comfortably well-off.

Then, why shoot a movie about him and his works?

The reason, beside astonishing organic artistic beauties produced by his genius, is that, as he talks partly to us, partly to himself, we actually see him slaving away at his project of the moment. "I must take things to the edge of destruction," he says. As do we, Nature, the Universe, or whatever god we may believe in, I suppose.

Not only that, but several times, an errant wave destroys his stone castle on the beach; the sun causes his ice sculpture to lose its shape before he has completed it; or his misplacing of a stick causes a whole structure to collapse on him. This is creativity in action! And there is nothing for him to do, as there is nothing for us to do, but start again.

Goldsworthy is clearly cognizant of God's or Nature's necessity for destruction, as when he dumps a pail of his red dye, ground from iron-bearing rock, into a stream and watches it flow like a river of blood to a delta.

In the realm of movies about Art, I can think of only two examples, neither so precisely personal, that are as good as RIVERS AND TIDES. One, mentioned by me before, is Orson Welles' superbly entertaining film essay on the nature of Art: *F FOR FAKE (1974). The other is *Saul Bass's 1968 short, "Why Man Creates" (perhaps the finest single film ever made on the total creative process).

The two theatrical showings of RIVERS AND TIDES that I attended here were packed. Evidently, many people find Riedelsheimer's 90 minute film interview with Goldsworthy as quietly and profoundly interesting as many do the two films I've mentioned above.

No doubt, Goldsworthy would agree with Welles that almost everything is temporal, and what remains important is that we should "all go on singing." That we should stand for Life and Creation against Death and Destruction. Goldsworthy would also agree with Bass, I think, that "How Man creates is Why Man Creates." He creates because he/she must.

In these days when we are reminded that Man covets Destruction as a creative act, as we threaten to go to "war" -- and great peace rallies, for the first time since Vietnam, are again beginning to swell across America and the World -- it may be comforting to watch an insignificant, thoughtful man creating with all his skill and heart, knowing that in half an hour, or in an instant, his work may be destroyed.

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Because RIVERS AND TIDES will not be a film that, as the result of a huge media campaign, draws you to your local multiplex, The Roxie Releasing Corporation continues to show it, often on a repeat basis, at various venues around the country. Keep an eye out for it.



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*Note: Rather ironically, Bass became the preeminent American designer of movie title cards -- i.e., THE PINK PANTHER.

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*A Macresarf1 Review of F FOR FAKE --

http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-3DA1-E636480-39AB1581-prod6

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If you wish to explore all of Macresarf1's reviews, indexed by title and category, many with URL's, paste to your browser and go to the following --

http://www.epinions.com/content_2514526340



Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older