Watermark

Film (2013)

Directed by Jennifer Baichwal & Edward Burtynsky

The photography in this documentary is certainly stunning, and anyone who is interested in a wide variety of aquatic cameos should run to see this film.

No doubt the film has some kind of environmental agenda, though it is not directly evident from the writing. We see oceanic water roiling, we see scientists probing ice cores in Greenland, we watch millions of people bathe unhygienically in the Ganges, and see about a million other things having to do with water as well. It’s amazing the filmmakers fit it all in the hour and a half allotted.

This is a film scrapbook of sorts, a kind of very beautiful, but confusing, film. What are the filmmakers setting out to do – show us water in all its variety and majesty? If so, I guess the film succeeds.

On the other hand, if the effort is to show something about the way in which humanity has misappropriated or mishandled or misused water, the message is so – er – watered down that nothing comes of it.

Literally before one has half a second to immerse oneself in the depicted scene or setting, it changes, often to something so radically different that any sense of connection is lost.

Chasing Ice (2012), a marvelously pointed documentary about global warming, tells, in its hour and a half – also with beautiful photography and some interesting details about the generation of its evidence – a compelling story. It is vividly environmental simply on the basis of photographic evidence, not overtly polemical nor full of talking heads trying to convince us of a position. It is clear, straightforward and to the point.

Watermark is a meandering meditation on water with many truly beautiful photographic elements but not much of narrative to hold them together. Its lovely images feel suggestive in some way, but it never really becomes clear what they’re suggesting.

– BADMan