'Aquarela' Is A Mesmerizing Meditation On The Immense Power Of Water [Review]

Beginning with a nearly wordless opening, tracking rescue workers on Lake Baikal in Siberia as they methodically chip away at the large sheets of ice that cover the lake in a frantic rescue operation for cars that have become trapped under the ice, Victor Kossakovsky’sAquarela” announces its theme immediately. Eschewing typical documentary techniques such as voiceover or, even, defining locations, “Aquarela” depicts the increasingly fraught relationship between mankind and water.

Playing more akin to the work of Godfrey Reggio (the ‘Qatsi” Trilogy) or Ron Fricke (”Baraka” and ”Samsara”), but replacing those directors penchant for orchestral scores with heavy metal music, Kossakovsky’s documentary is visually stunning, hypnotic, and, in the end, a powerful reminder of water’s immense power and human’s inability to control it. In short, “Aquarela” is truly astonishing and should be seen on the biggest screen possible. 

Filmed at 96 frames per second, Kossakovsky’s film consists of a series of wordless vignettes as his crew moves from Siberia to Greenland to Florida, among other places. Yet in the act of watching the film, these locations bleed together, as the director cuts from one to the other, moving from frozen glaciers to the tropics as water invades every scene of the film. When humans are shown it’s often in the struggle to control the water, as is the case on Lake Baikal or when the film shows two sailors attempting to navigate stormy seas. Instead of intellectualizing this relationship, Kossakovsky surrenders his film to the power of rushing water with pulsing metal music accompanying, only occasionally dipping below the surface for a quick reprieve and silence. It’s an aggressive and loud approach that only lets up in the film’s final moments, replacing cycles of splashing waves with the serenity of a rainbow and a waterfall.  

What could come across as boring, pretentious, or, even worse, empty, considering the film’s what you see is what you get approach is, instead, mesmerizing. Given the lack of contextualization and as the film’s water cycles through storm after storm, including an extended section that takes place in the middle of Hurricane Irma, tracking through the desolate streets as traffic lights violently swing from the winds, the viewer is left to consider the implications of man’s relationship with water and how most attempts to control the force are thwarted, as we are shown dams overflowing and a small sailboat rocking in the violent waves. 

The film’s poster hypes the “ultimate theatrical experience” and despite the fact that most theaters will be unable to show the film in its true 96 fps format, “Aquarela” is truly a theatrical experience that benefits from the dark, distraction-free nature of the theater, in which the cycles of water, from frozen lakes to hurricanes, becomes an all-consuming force. [A]