Watermark (2014)

People are voting emotionally.

Excellent, a Must See

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Stunningly beautiful and powerful images highlight this examination of how mankind re-shapes water and how it flows – for good and ill, more often ill - and in turn how the water re-shapes civilization and human behavior. There's no real story, just a series of visits to locations around the world where water powerfully interacts with humanity, like the pilgrimage of 30 million people to bathe in the Ganges river.Without narration and a specific focus the film could be accused of being too diffuse. But for me the raw power of the images – Burtynsky is one of our greatest still photographers who has spent much of his career creating huge images of humans and nature clashing and interacting - give the piece a poetic, if not literal power and solidity. Also, if the film is not enough, there's an almost 40 minute gallery of Burtynsky's amazing still images, which look great blown up on a HD set, as he explains the photographs and how they were taken. That extra alone is reason enough to own the blu-ray. It's like the world's best photography book, with the images at least a little closer in size to Burtynsky's massive prints.

This movie showcases the cinematographer/director's beautiful eye. That's it. His ego is on display in the cinematography along with all of his indulgences. The images are beautiful, buy very bad storytelling. The opening of this file is interesting in that it gets your attention, but then quickly lost mine as I thought I was watching a silent film. This is not a documentary. The most dialogue happens around the 45 minute mark. I still don't know what their main point was for this movie. What is it about water that they are trying to get across? Basically, what I got of this movie is that they left it up to us to make our own conclusion about water. I watch movies so I don't have to come to my own conclusion. If I want only my own opinion then I don't need to watch a movie for that. That's an hour and half that I will never get back.

Watermark's opening minutes is a long drawn out shot of gates opening releasing huge amounts of water. We then cut to what feels like 5 minutes, to nothing. A dried up river. What a memorable way to open a film.This is one of the best looking movies I have seen in a long time and it shows. But, that is the main problem I have with it. It is so beautifully shot, that it is overlooks its message. We are so busy looking at the most amazing scenery that we forget what the movie is really about which the people being interviewed for such a short time remind us.The movie's main message is what one of the people say: Nothing lasts forever. They talk about how we are all water, how every species drinks water, how water is used to help make things, but the thing is we do know about some of this already. But, the things we don't know are at the most amusing.I have nothing else to say about this movie and I am sorry. But all it is, is it's eye candy. Nothing more, nothing less. Overlooking its message. The reason I rated it 7 is because there were so many memorable shots in the movie that I loved. But for the rest, it tries to get its point across, but rarely does.71/100 B-

Edward Burtynsky's and Jennifer Baichwal's documentary Watermark is a celebration of human stupidity. The film's explicit theme is the interdependence of man and water. It shapes us and we shape it. As an organism we're born in water and we can't survive without it. It's the essential bond not just between man and nature but between people. Burtynsky's whole career has centered on the world we found and how we are changing it. But the implicit theme is our folly. In the Vegas desert Bellagio's stages a magnificent exhibition of dancing, orchestrated fountains. With water. Brilliant that they have the imagination and technology to do that. Gob-smacking idiocy that they so wastefully do so. So too the aerial view of a private swimming pool in a backyard, that draws back to reveal a city full of separate homes with separate pools and separate marinas.Every twelve years 35,000,000 Indians make a pilgrimage to the Ganges, where they wash away their sins by washing their clothes, bathing, and filling their plastic water bottles in the -- may we surmise 'unclean' ? -- river. That they survive until the next festival measures out their imperviousness to logic and to care. We cut to the Western equivalent: a massive crowd gathered on the shore for the US Open surfboard competition. So many cultures, so many gods. To Burtynsky's credit he doesn't explicitly comment on these follies. They speak for themselves. Of course water gives us a chance to show our worth. A community of abalone-fishers link their nets and operations to help each other. They confirm their interdependence (unlike the community with as many pools as families). But the fishermen know their plenteous preserve is only for the while before it dies. As will their community. In Greenland scientists plunge down through millennia of ice to draw up analyses of historic climate readings. But having fine scientists doesn't mean we're not stupid enough to ignore them. As the filmmakers doubtless know, the Canadian government of Stephen Harper has been systematically throttling its scientists, both physical and social, reducing funds and freedom for their research, suppressing their findings, preventing any possibility of their science countering the government's ideology. For more see www.yacowar.blogspot.com.