Aquarela
AQUARELA - SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
An estimated 96.5% of the Earth's surface is made of some form of water. From the violent and vast oceans to the frozen glaciers, there is no denying the critical role water plays on Earth. In Aquarela, director Viktor Kossakovsky takes the audience on a global showcase of this water and the various impacts it can play.
Instead of focusing on building a narrative — or even context for the various scenes and forms of water being shown — Aquarela acts almost like an art exhibition rather than a movie as it jumps from visual to visual, focusing on the power of these scenes over anything else. The only two throughlines of the film are the visual of water and a rock soundtrack. In the way of an art exhibition, Aquarela is not a film that tells its secrets easily. Rather than building clear takeaways and points of conversation, Aquarela provides visuals and sounds — even without the context of what the visuals are — and leaves the rest to the audience to be submerged.
Where one could take away messages of climate change, another could walk away with something totally different. This allows some audience members to develop a more personally rich meaning from the film, while also opening the door for some audiences to take away nothing from the film at all — no doubt a sentiment which is going to be the case for plenty. This is a film that requires the audience to put in work, which merely is not going to work with some, especially considering how vague the puzzle pieces are with this film.
The only real universal takeaway from Aquarela is the beauty of some of these shots. With cinematography by Ben Bernhard & Viktor Kossakovsky, Aquarela is effective at bringing the sheer power and beauty of the featured locations to life. Visually, this film is — without a doubt — a work of art. Past the visuals, however, the film struggles to feel like that engaging of a watch, often feeling like an overall empty experience. Where there are large scale takeaways that can be made from the film, the actual process of coming to these conclusions feels like a missed opportunity being held back by being in the format of a feature film.
Without anything of substance to chew on, visuals of ice can only hold an audience's attention for so long — definitely far less than the hour and a half runtime this movie holds. Unlike an actual art exhibit, once the audience has taken in a piece of the film, it is impossible to move on to the next. The pacing is up to the discretion of the film, which is the wrong approach for a project like this.
There is no denying the visual power that Aquarela holds but, as a film and a piece of art, it feels like this subject matter could have been handled in a much more effective matter. It is clear that at heart, this project is not meant to be showcased as a film with a set runtime like this, sadly ending up feeling slow and drawn out rather than powerful and impactful. Aquarela is no doubt good but due to how much it drags at times due to the format it is being presented in, it really can never be called anything more.
AQUARELA is releases December 13th 2019
