Thats your very capsule review of Aquarela, a new film from Russian documentarian Victor Kossakovsky.The movie begins, though, and for a very long time stays with, ice.Ice on a body of water thats too thin to support the weight of a car.
The movie doesnt tell you exactly where it is at any given time, but here its with some police figures who drill and hammer through ice and then very gingerly try to hoist a submerged car. As the filmmaker widens his perspective, we understand the presence of a lake, or perhaps a bay, on which lunatics speed their vehicles. He actually captures, at 94 frames a second, one of those cars going under broken ice. Without any expositional assistance, we are going to spend the next hour and twenty minutes and change watchingand hearingthe awesome implacable power of water. Icebergs fall off of glaciers and into water, and rise up again, the noise accompanying them rather like an earthquake. Sometimes the camera will just sit between ocean and sky, or hover above churning, roiling water. The abstract patterns it creates are dizzying and terrifying. Two crew members turn wheels, climb masts, executing their moves with deliberation and trying to avoid haste. Some will recognize Miami as it is pummeled by Hurricane Irma. Here one of the courageous (and, one has to say, foolhardy) filmmakers ventures outside and runs up a boulevard, its traffic lights hanging by wires after being unmoored from their posts, palm trees getting their fronds ripped off by the brutal winds. Here the amazing imagery attains a level of terrifying abstractness. This is a purely sensationalistic cinematic experience that paradoxically encourages reflection and contemplation. Although the use of some (admittedly pretty good) heavy metal music on the soundtrack feels like a bit of overreaching. The guitar riffs rhyme with the growth of a tidal wave to such an extent youre almost waiting for a gravelly bass voice to announce EXTREEEEEEEEME WEATHERRRRR The genuine awesome on display here doesnt need that cheese injection. ![]()
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