Customer Reviews
A personal look 
2008-07-07
The film maker's skill matches the sensitivity of Goldsworthy - - a seamless relationship. I watch this over and over. EVERY time, I see something that startles and wonder how I could have missed it before. In this way, the DVD is an ever renewing source of jolts... the best kind. It has also become something of a barometer of my own ability to SEE, to be in the moment. My tiny TV is in front of windows that look into the forest. I often have layers of nature in front of me, real and virtual. I hope to see another DVD like this in the future. I will be first in line.
The Art of the Ephemeral 2008-07-01
Andy Goldsworthy creates art that a 5-year old can understand, stacking rocks, arranging leaves, piling sticks, drawing in the snow. His "work" (as he keeps calling it) is simple in concept, but maybe not so simple to execute as well as he does.
And that is both the strength of it, and its downfall. The simplicity is unpretentious and pure in a way that art very rarely is, these days. At the same time it is fun and silly and unsophisticated in a way that makes Andy's serious pronouncements about "his work" and "my art" sound like a 5-year old kid who never got his parents' approval. The fact that he spends so much energy building contructs of such fragile beauty, which are almost always blown away by the wind or tides until nothing remains -- and the fact that he gets so agitated when the inevitable collapse occurs -- make you wonder after his sanity. Why does he torture himself so, what drives him to such Sisyphean frustration?
The film, by Thomas Reidelsheimer, deserves five stars for the languid portrait it paints of the hunger artist. Like his following film Touch The Sound, it is a masterful exploration of a driven personality, one which manages to both illuminate -- and puzzle over -- the subject artist. Both films also benefit from stunning soundtracks by Fred Frith.
Rivers and Tides-an artist at work 2008-06-20
Andy Goldsworthy is an amazing artist and seeing him in action is incredible. He builds sculptures out of natural materials (stones, leaves, ice) and then waits for nature to do her part in the natural destruction of them. His books have pictures of both the finished product and sometimes the sequence either leading up to or after the sculpture is complete, but to see the painstaking process of building (not always successfully) is very impressive. Nice narration too.
great stuff 2008-05-27
I enjoyed this video very much and thought that it was a beautiful piece of work. For anyone that it interested in seeing the earth and its makeup in a different light, this is something you might be interested in.
Goldsworthy DVD is a little slow moving 
2008-05-12
I bought this for my high school art class. They were fascinated for the first 20 minutes. After that they lost interest. I thought Goldsworthy was much more exciting than this.
Visual Wonder! 2008-05-02
Wildly praised by the nation's top critics, the smash theatrical hit RIVERS AND TIDES is a mesmerizing, poetic and curiously contemplative portrait of revered Scottish sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, whose long-winding rock walls, icicle assemblages and other intricate, druidic masterpieces are made entirely of materials found in the wild. Gorgeously shot and edited by director Thomas Riedelsheimer, RIVERS AND TIDES is an intoxicating study of the fragile relationship between man, art and nature.
Poor little Andy 
2008-03-29
This is the most hilariously overrated film I've seen in recent memory. It made me laugh harder than Superbad. And the piles of lavishing praise shown in these reviews take me to an extremely cynical place with the epiphany that Art is truly a minor part of peoples' lives. Even professional film critics (paired with the "user comments" of gullible civilians like/unlike yours truly) reserve a small window for the seeming "fine" arts, and whatever cow patty splats at their feet conveniently gets awarded the quota.
To be ironic and yet truthful, I highly recommend this film for some of the funniest moments in cinematic history. You will be cheering for Andy's little nature puzzles to collapse by the first quarter-hour, and when they do, it's devilish fun.
Rivers and Tides by Andy Goldsworthy 2008-03-27
The film is a superb visual feast following the work of the outdoor artist, Andy Goldsworthy, as he uses water, leaves, snow, ice, petals, rocks, sticks and stalks to make art in the landscape. He talks movingly and poetically while he works.
The 2 copies I bought on Amazon were seriously flawed, with many breaks in the film, so I returned them and bought them from the Yorkshire Sculpture Park instead
Beautiful. 
2008-03-10
Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time (Thomas Riedelsheimer, 2001)
Andy Goldsworthy takes the concept of the mandala to its absurd extreme; he makes huge sculptures of natural materials whose entire purpose is to be destroyed by the elements. Upon hearing this, you kind of have to ask yourself what kind of mutter would do such a thing. Thomas Riedelsheimer aims to show you.
Rivers and Tides has the rather interesting distinction of having won every award for which it was nominated (there were seven, if you're keeping count), and it's pretty easy to see why. Not only is Goldsworthy himself quite charismatic (and, yes, more than a bit eccentric, which can only help in a documentary), but Riedelsheimer is a fantastic camerman. There's never a situation where you feel Riedelsheimer is overtly tugging at you-- this may have something to do with the organic nature of the things he's filming-- but despite the (rather odd, for a documentary) feeling of straightforward camerawork, it's impossible to dismiss the beautifully composed nature of some of the images. Granted, this is a film about composition, and much of it can be attributed to Goldsworthy; Riedelsheimer is, after all, filming Goldsworthy much of the time during the process of creation. But, for example, Riedelsheimer's lingering shot of the ice snake sculpture towards the beginning of the film; it's obvious no one set up the sun. It's as if Riedelsheimer took a few steps back, two or three to the left, saw what was going on, and then snapped camera to shoulder and started filming.
A gorgeous piece of work, which deserves a whole lot more exposure than it's gotten. See it soon. ****
dana p 2008-03-09
this is a beautiful, fascinating film. great documentation of the creative process. quiet and meditative.
