RIVER
*****
Director and Writer: Jennifer Peedom
Screenwriter: Robert Macfarlane
Co-Directed and Co-Written by: Joseph Nizeti
Principal cast:
Willem Dafoe (narrator)
Richard Tognetti
The Australian Chamber Orchestra
William Barton
Country: Australia
Classification: E
Runtime: 75 mins.
Australian release date: 24 March 2022.
“We must ask ourselves are we being good ancestors?”, says Willem Dafoe in slow, deep cadences, as he narrates the stunning new Australian film River, a hauntingly beautiful and sobering documentary from the team behind 2017’s Mountain. It reprises the successful collaboration between director Jennifer Peedom, writer Robert Macfarlane, narrator Willem Dafoe, Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, all of whom worked together on the earlier film. On this occasion, the team included co-director and co-writer Joseph Nizeti, who contributed to the excellent script with Macfarlane. Shot on six continents, it takes us on a journey that is at once meditative, informative, awe-inspiring and sad, while showing nature at its best and worst and gently reminding us that, if we don’t make changes to our treatment of the natural world, we will destroy it. Indeed, as the film shows, we have badly damaged some wild places already. Peedom explains that, “Whereas the first film, Mountain, was a story about those who seek risk and challenge in mountains, we saw in River the potential to tell a more universal story. After all, the essential need for fresh water is one thing common to all people. As the W.H Auden poem goes, ‘Thousands have lived without love, not one without water’.”
River looks at rivers in all their forms, be they gaseous (steam and clouds), solid (ice and glaciers) or liquid (streams and rivers); it also examines Man’s negative impact on them in trying to control these untamed phenomena and includes some archival material of dam building and the like. The cinematography is simply amazing, much of it aerial shots, and it’s been well selected and masterfully edited by Simon Njoo. Using images taken from satellites, helicopters and drones, and often speeding them up or slowing them down, the pictures are breathtaking, appearing at times to be paintings in a gallery, such is their beauty. French filmmaker Arthus Yann-Bertrand, a master of aerial photography, Ben Knight, Sherpas Cinema, Renan Ozturk (who filmed much of Mountain) and Pete McBride were the key cinematographers on the project but specific footage came from collaborators around the world. Macfarlane’s spare, poetic narration script treads the line between proselytising and informing remarkably well (indeed, Peedom has previously acknowledged that she feels to be too political is to risk losing half your audience), yet it certainly relays some surprising facts. Dafoe delivers it with gravitas and great skill, his gravelly tones suggesting things that aren’t necessarily on the page; he says that he tries “to make sounds that whisper with the image to suggest questions and make objective observations.” Add a glorious soundtrack performed by the ACO, with music from a diverse range of composers, including J.S. Bach and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, Richard Tognetti and improvisations sung by William Barton. This eclectic mix of sources works wonderfully well together, linked by the superb playing of the ACO.
In a statement, Peedom and Nizeti have stated that, “Ultimately, we hope that River prompts the audience to contemplate what it means to think like a river – to dream downstream in time to the longer-term consequences of our actions in the present – to contemplate what it means to be good ancestors.” Their extraordinary film achieves that aim. See it for the incredible imagery, see it for the magnificent music or see it for the brilliant script, but see it (on the big screen)!
Screenwriter: Robert Macfarlane
Co-Directed and Co-Written by: Joseph Nizeti
Principal cast:
Willem Dafoe (narrator)
Richard Tognetti
The Australian Chamber Orchestra
William Barton
Country: Australia
Classification: E
Runtime: 75 mins.
Australian release date: 24 March 2022.
“We must ask ourselves are we being good ancestors?”, says Willem Dafoe in slow, deep cadences, as he narrates the stunning new Australian film River, a hauntingly beautiful and sobering documentary from the team behind 2017’s Mountain. It reprises the successful collaboration between director Jennifer Peedom, writer Robert Macfarlane, narrator Willem Dafoe, Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, all of whom worked together on the earlier film. On this occasion, the team included co-director and co-writer Joseph Nizeti, who contributed to the excellent script with Macfarlane. Shot on six continents, it takes us on a journey that is at once meditative, informative, awe-inspiring and sad, while showing nature at its best and worst and gently reminding us that, if we don’t make changes to our treatment of the natural world, we will destroy it. Indeed, as the film shows, we have badly damaged some wild places already. Peedom explains that, “Whereas the first film, Mountain, was a story about those who seek risk and challenge in mountains, we saw in River the potential to tell a more universal story. After all, the essential need for fresh water is one thing common to all people. As the W.H Auden poem goes, ‘Thousands have lived without love, not one without water’.”
River looks at rivers in all their forms, be they gaseous (steam and clouds), solid (ice and glaciers) or liquid (streams and rivers); it also examines Man’s negative impact on them in trying to control these untamed phenomena and includes some archival material of dam building and the like. The cinematography is simply amazing, much of it aerial shots, and it’s been well selected and masterfully edited by Simon Njoo. Using images taken from satellites, helicopters and drones, and often speeding them up or slowing them down, the pictures are breathtaking, appearing at times to be paintings in a gallery, such is their beauty. French filmmaker Arthus Yann-Bertrand, a master of aerial photography, Ben Knight, Sherpas Cinema, Renan Ozturk (who filmed much of Mountain) and Pete McBride were the key cinematographers on the project but specific footage came from collaborators around the world. Macfarlane’s spare, poetic narration script treads the line between proselytising and informing remarkably well (indeed, Peedom has previously acknowledged that she feels to be too political is to risk losing half your audience), yet it certainly relays some surprising facts. Dafoe delivers it with gravitas and great skill, his gravelly tones suggesting things that aren’t necessarily on the page; he says that he tries “to make sounds that whisper with the image to suggest questions and make objective observations.” Add a glorious soundtrack performed by the ACO, with music from a diverse range of composers, including J.S. Bach and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, Richard Tognetti and improvisations sung by William Barton. This eclectic mix of sources works wonderfully well together, linked by the superb playing of the ACO.
In a statement, Peedom and Nizeti have stated that, “Ultimately, we hope that River prompts the audience to contemplate what it means to think like a river – to dream downstream in time to the longer-term consequences of our actions in the present – to contemplate what it means to be good ancestors.” Their extraordinary film achieves that aim. See it for the incredible imagery, see it for the magnificent music or see it for the brilliant script, but see it (on the big screen)!