For Mountain, an enchanting ode to the call of the mountains released in 2017, director Jennifer Peedom formed her first partnership with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and with American actor Willem Dafoe, on narration. She uses the same recipe for River, a new release broadcast this evening and made from the same three ingredients: captivating images, powerful music and a text preaching the veneration of nature in general – here, that of rivers. She thus perpetuates her vision of the hyperaesthetic documentary film with a message, to which the viewer will adhere with pleasure, provided they let themselves be carried away by her dreamlike poetry.
Fortunately, a few breaks create a surprise effect. Starting with the prelude, filmed in a recording studio, in the presence of musicians from the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and Willem Dafoe. “Man harnesses the power [of rivers]. Has he forgotten that he must worship them too? », asks the voice-over of Eric Herson-Macarel, dubbing for the French version.
Ambitious, the film goes back to the origin of waterways, born from rain that fell “over several thousand years”. The graphic aerial views are reminiscent of abstract paintings: bright green and steel gray, yellow and brown, shades of icy blues.
Untenable situation
The shots, lasting one to two seconds, follow one another quickly in a unity of tones and themes, but without caption – a desire for universality on the part of the director. There is therefore no need to find out in which part of the globe they were taken. We can just try to guess: these temples which stand out in the mist at the evocation of the first human cities are reminiscent of the Inca cities.
The second break is materialized by an archival sequence, showing the first exploitations of waterways (sailing boats, rudimentary irrigation systems, etc.), in order to represent the beginnings of trade, before political issues and conflicts. Then it moves on to the construction of dams and canals, launched to tame the waters which flood or destroy.
Even if the good intentions are underlined – feeding populations, making arid lands fertile, avoiding floods – the commentary contrasts human societies – poor – which continue to revere rivers and rivers to those – rich – which only exploit them or have fun with them.
The transition to today marks the return of the rapid sequence of very brief images of aerial views. They then denounce the excessive irrigation of intensive agriculture, the pharaonic bridges, and show, in particular, the now known image of hundreds of Asian bathers crowded together with their buoys, to the point that the water is no longer visible.
An untenable situation: “The largest dams retain so much water that they have slowed down the rotation of the Earth,” the voice-over reveals and warns. From magical, the images, always so graphic, become frightening, and particularly resonate after the floods that occurred in Libya on September 10 and 11, after defective dams failed.
A final break on the water cycle and its “rivers of the sky” precedes the chapter of solutions, which can be confusing. Let’s just say that, “if we free them from our yoke, the rivers can be reborn.”
