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| Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics |
Enter Russian documentary filmmaker Viktor Kossakovsky, who
with Long Live the Antipodes and his Paul Thomas Anderson endorsed farmland
documentary Gunda has proven himself to be one of the most forward-thinking
pure documentarians since the emergence of Ron Fricke and his Baraka and
Samsara films. In between Gunda
and Love Live the Antipodes and in answer to the water films involving
what we bring to it comes Kossakovsky’s awesome, captivating and terrifying documentary
film experience Aquarela (‘water-color’ in Portuguese), possibly the
most dangerous film ever made about what those omnipresent fearsome bodies of
water themselves bring to us. Rather
that going the usual route of talking about water scientifically or presenting
a narrative to guide us through it, Kossakovsky and Aqualera aim to see
and hear out what water has to say.
A near wordless (save for some occasional Russian)
experience beginning in the frozen Russian waters of Lake Baikal all the way
through Hurricane Irma in Miami, Florida and back through Venezuela’s Angel Falls,
from start to finish Aqualera with its Arri digital 96 frames-per-second
cinematography and Dolby Atmos soundtrack is fiercely bold. Though only some theaters at the time were
able to handle projecting the footage at 48 fps, the visual results
nevertheless yielded a vision of water from freezing to boiling previously
unseen on the silver screen if not ever.
While a documentary, the film takes on a psychedelic, hallucinatory
feeling as its pure tidal waves crash into and wave over you reminiscent of Fata
Morgana or Koyaanisqatsi where the synergy of documentary footage
and editing creates a transcendent, almost lyrical experience for the viewer.
It is also widely considered to be the most dangerous documentary
ever made, opening on a car careening across the Siberian lake before abruptly
penetrating and disappearing into the ice.
Two of the three inside the car free themselves as Kossakovsky and crew
race to the scene to help only to find the ice was already melting underneath
them, the prospect of the crew going down into the frozen water growing very
real for them too. As they try to break
through while a survivor wails in despair, the camera floats away looking down
at glaciers and sharp ice patches as the sound of an avalanche floods the
soundtrack. Much of Aquarela structurally
is like this, weaving and waving from quiet dull calm to an angry and hyper
roar when water amid oceans and tropical storms show off their fiercest might.
Also seeping through the waves and rain is a heavy-metal
score by Apocalyptica (Finnish composer Eicca Toppinen) which evokes
everything from Penderecki-esque notes of stark terror to poignant violin vibes
echoing the mournful sounds of the Kronos Quartet. Despite the presence of the soundtrack,
however, the audiovisual experience of receiving Aquarela is almost
completely unfettered and left up to the audience to interpret how to process
the cinematic Tsunamis coming their way.
For something as awesome and boringly ordinary as water let alone a film
devoted to it for two hours spanning the globe, you’ve simply never seen, heard
or felt a movie like this before neither in fiction or nonfiction pieces. For once, like the tires and feet cracking
through the melting ice, Aquarela and Kossakovsky have broken new
ground.
Billed as ‘The Ultimate Theatrical Experience’ replete with ‘High
Frame Rate’ and ‘Dolby Atmos’ in select cities, the $2.6 million pioneering Aquarela
is the kind of event movie that comes around once in a lifetime, a film
that forces you to stop and ponder the world you’re living in largely
surrounded by water. We depend on water
for life and yet it has the chilly unfeeling capacity to bring death in great
numbers. Aquarela doesn’t have
the answers regarding this symbiotic relationship between our world and the
next but it brings the vessel of water that much closer under the microscopic
camera’s eye than ever before.
Watching Aquarela you feel as helpless as the crew
who somehow or another turned over ravishing, astonishing images of water that
dazzle and confound the eyes. For some,
the subject and film’s shapelessness will frustrate if not bore outright while
others expecting it to reach for grandiose meaning will, no pun intended, find
their hands closing on water. And yet in
this manner the film for others becomes a fabulous one-of-a-kind experience we
invariably absorb like cinematic sponges.
Not everyone will take to this project nor should they as its boldness
helps to set itself apart from the pack, a film that crashes all around the
viewer while also letting us occasionally swim through if not walk upon its
waters. There’s no two ways to assess Aquarela
but as far as a nonfiction film tackling the nature and possibly even the
personality of water as a being we continue to try and learn from and respect
its rivers, this brings us closer into the idea of water from top to bottom
perhaps than simply immersing yourself in it physically.
--Andrew Kotwicki
