It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

The Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy fashions natural materials into ephemeral artworks, assembling rocks into egg-shaped cairns, filling riverside rock-pools with fiery flowers and stitching thorns and twigs into intricate web patterns. An original work and a few photographs of his other creations are tucked away in a corner of Southampton art gallery (near where I live), but although I found these pieces intriguing, I only realised the wonder of Goldsworthy's work when I was lucky enough to catch a re-screening of Rivers and Tides.Thomas Reidelsheimer's film, accompanied by a beautiful instrumental soundtrack by Fred Frith, brings Goldsworthy and his art to life by showing the artist at work. The opening scene captures him fusing icicle fragments into a snake-like thread set atop a tree-stump. Working with his teeth and bare hands, Goldsworthy crafts a beautiful, ephemeral work. Before long this delicate sculpture melts away to nothing in the brilliant Nova Scotian sunlight. This scene is among the most beautiful in the film, but the breadth and inventiveness of Goldsworthy's work is remarkable. Reidelsheimer shows both the successes and the failures, capturing the frustration of pieces that collapse before they are completed as well as the glory of those that shine, even if for just a few hours, minutes or seconds.Goldsworthy himself provides the narration, speaking slowly but thoughtfully about the themes in his work. He makes plain his need to work with nature, to be alone in it and to further his understanding of it through trying to work with natural materials, even when they seem to be working against him. At times he is down-to-earth and humorous; at other times he struggles for the words to express his purpose – something which is quite understandable when witnessing his astonishing work first hand. The 'Rivers and Tides' of the title become increasingly pertinent as we see the natural materials pass through the artist's hands, flowing from one form to the next. The capture of the creation and dissolution of Goldworthy's work is in itself a striking piece of art.Although Goldsworthy works with widely varying materials and covers territory across North America and Europe, the presentation of artworks one after the other in this film is exhausting; it gave me the same feeling of fatigue that I get when I spend too long in an art gallery and struggle to take in anything new. A brief interval in which we are introduced to Andy's family and hometown is all that breaks the long succession of his artworks. Nevertheless, Reidelsheimer does a superb job in photographing Goldsworthy and his creations, locating them in their wider environments, from meandering Canadian rivers to rainy Scottish hillsides. Fittingly, the film ends with Goldsworthy casting handfuls of earth and snow into the sky. Fleeting patterns emerge from the dust particles even as they dissipate into the air; this is the purest expression of the beauty to be found in the work of this remarkable artist.

Right at this moment I am watching this movie for the second time (on television) and for the second time I fell into it when it was running for an hour already (I think I saw 2 minutes more this time) This movie is really impressing, the way Goldsworthy looks at nature, changes nature in a way that you yourself would never think of, really is amazing. This whole movie gives you a warm feeling, seeing him play with the world around him with such love. Or only seeing his hands, covered in dirt and with broken fingernails, it just touches you.

Go see this movie for the gorgeous imagery of Andy Goldsworthy's sculptures, and treat yourself to a thoroughly eye-opening and relaxing experience. The music perfectly complements the footage, but never draws attention towards itself. Some commentators called the interview snippets with the artist a weak spot, but consider this: why would you expand on this in a movie, if you can read Andy's musings at length in his books, or attend one of his excellent lectures? This medium is much more suitable to show the ephemeral nature of the artist's works, and is used expertly in this respect.

This German documentary, in English, is about a Scottish environmental sculptor named Andy Goldsworthy. He makes art from objects he finds in nature. For example, early in the film we see him taking sections of icicles and "gluing" them together with a little moisture into a serpentine shape that seems to repeatedly go through a vertical rock.Of course, the icicles melt, but that transience is a part of most of Goldsworthy's work. He goes to a site and gets a feeling for it, deciding intuitively what to make that day. He talks of having a "dialog" with the rocks and other materials that he works with, attempting to work *with* rather than against them. It might be stones, or flowers, or leaves, or sticks. The sculpture might last for minutes or years, or might not even last long enough to be completed and photographed. The work seems to be more of a process than a goal.The film, and the work, is beautiful, inspiring, and thought provoking. It moves pretty slowly, which is appropriate for the material, but you should be sure to go when you have had a good night's sleep. But do go if you have the opportunity.Search the web for some other pages about Andy Goldsworthy or to read about his local sculpture at Stanford University. There are also several books available with photographs of his sculptures.My thoughts: Skip reading this part if you want to find what this film means to you completely independently. I recall a couple of ideas that occurred to me while watching the film which I thought I would share for those of you still reading. First, the transitory nature of much of Andy Goldsworthy's work reminded me of the natural ebb and flow of human life. We're born, we live, and eventually we die. That's natural, and that's also naturally a part of Goldsworthy's art.The other thought was to be awestruck with the way that Goldsworthy has managed to integrate his passion and his work so thoroughly into his life. Most of us have work which is tolerated at best, a life which we hardly notice living, and passions which we really mean to spend more time on, if we even remember what they are. Andy Goldsworthy has managed to create an amalgam of all of these aspects of his life that looks like it works very well, and is nourishing for him and those around him. Wow.Seen on 8/28/2002.