Time and Water: Beauty At The Intersection of Nature and Mortality

In 2022, director Sara Dosa floored the world with her beautiful documentary, Fire of Love. Nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the following year’s Academy Awards, it is considered one of the best documentaries of the decade so far. Telling the love between French volcanologists Katia and Maurice Kraft, Dosa constructs a film on both their passion for one other, and their love of volcanoes. Four years later, she returns with another film circling the connection between people and nature. Time and Water borrows from the book by Andri Snær Magnason, a popular Icelandic writer and filmmaker, famous for his 2006 book ‘Dreamland: A Self Help Manual for a Frightened Nation.’ Similarly to the writings about the Krafts in her former work, her latest tackles the writer’s experience.

Contrary to the tragic ending of her previous work, Time and Water is arguably less bittersweet. Dosa’s thematic axis is Magnason’s blurry impressions of the period of his life, and the melting of the central glaciers in Iceland. At most, the dichotomy, present in the book and film titles, borrows from his observations on the central element of his homeland, the glacial masses, and the loss of the pillar of his familiar life – his grandparents. Therefore, the beauty of the imagery lies exactly in the juxtaposition between the icebergs, declining due to solar radiation. Above all else, the film is about the days passing by, and how the ticking clock takes away the youth in our souls. Magnason’s presence imparts it with a signature that feels more his than Dosa’s at times, similarly to a docu-biography.

However, the director’s sensible approach reframes an utterly personal story, adapting it to a form that resembles Jonas Mekas’s in passages, especially because of its self-documentary style. It utilizes Magnason’s home footage, from the birth of his children, to the health decline of his grandparents, among other moments. Most of the scenes highlight that juxtaposition, the contrast between his personal life, and the joy and the problematic influences of the destruction of Iceland via global warming. In this sense, the nature of the content, which derives from the personal experiences, feels a tad too self-centered in a unidimensional sense. It is inevitable to compare it to Fire of Love, especially given its similar structure, largely due to the editing by Erin Casper (co-signed with Jocelyne Chaput and Mark Harrison), who worked on the former, which imprints the same sense here.

Still, Dosa portrays the story of a man in pain, one wounded by the melting of his homeland, the death of his loved ones, and the inevitable passage of time, which reflects on the ocean that covers that country. Even if the film may be self-indulgent and not as fascinating as Fire of Love, she reminds us of her efficiency in frames that connect emotions and elements. The role of water in this film mirrors what fire meant to the Krafts: natural gifts assign meaning to the individuals who somehow thrive in embodying it. Hence, Magnason’s story is universal: the loss of someone we love is inevitable. Yet, there is plenty to admire in here.

Overall, Time and Water is arguably too centered in the figure of Andri Snær Magnason, who provides its footage, its source material, and the voice-over, as opposed to Miranda July’s work in Fire of Love. Still, the film proves that director Sara Dosa is a talented filmmaker who crafts a beautiful film about the environment and what binds us all: death.

still courtesy of National Geographic Documentary Films

If you liked this, please read our other reviews here and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter or Instagram or like us on Facebook.

Pedro Lima

Brazilian film writer. He is also a producer and executive producer for Zariah Filmes. Member of the International Film Society Critics Association (IFSCA), International Documentary Association (IDA), and Gotham and Media Film Institute.