Aquarela

A breathtaking and offensive documentary in the vein of Werner Herzog's Lessons of Darkness.

In the face of an actual, urgent and existing climate crisis, however, it feels slightly slack.

In this vision, water feels like a very old god: a pagan one that is volatile, wrathful, impassive to the perils of man and yet majestic and serene.

It's a movie on a powerfully ambitious scale. Its subject could hardly be more relevant.

At every stage, Aquarela is a voyage on the edges of elemental wrath.

It's a pretty interesting nature documentary as far as it goes. But given its globe-trotting scope and the risky location work involved for the filmmakers, it's a tiny bit strange "Aquarela" goes only so far.

Aquarela is one of the rare documentaries that may cause a sharp divide because of how the visuals and sounds attack the viewer at every turn.

Immersive, cinematically overpowering - delivering an (unstated) environmental message that - with global warming - we're all living on thin ice.

[Aquarela's] like a very deep, and much more artful, National Geographic project.

Ultimately, Aquarela is a dull, one-tone documentary that offers a pretentious filmmaking approach. What saves this from being a total washout is its cinematography.