Review of Watermark (2013) by Amanda C — 25 Dec 2013

As with Manufactured Landscapes, the previous collaboration between Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky, Watermark is worth seeing just for the images that they manage to produce. The two's visual sensibility is impeccable and the images themselves raise the ever fascinating conundrum of the beautiful and the horrific all rolled into one.

The images of water and the effect that humans have on it are spectacular, but ultimately unsettling at best, and disturbing at worst. Unfortunately there is something in the construction of the film that leaves it hovering in between.

While the filmmakers are clearly trying to prevent straight facts, which is admirable, it leaves the film without a clear direction. Even though the majority of the images show the destruction we're wreaking on the planet's most valuable resource, there is no feeling of urgency to the film, no sense of a call to action.

This makes Watermark a gorgeous diversion that feels like it has more to say, but doesn't quite know how to frame it.