

For a movie about global warming, “Aquarela” leaves you awfully cold. Not just because of the mountains of glaciers captured deconstructing, but because director Victor Kossakovsky's approach is so chillingly distant and aloof. Yes, he’s the artist and entitled to make all the choices, but that doesn’t mean I have to like them.

The footage, shot in such diverse locations as Miami, Greenland and the semi-frozen tundra of his native Russia, is assuredly gorgeous – and unsettling in its urgency in chronicling a crisis that could lead to the end of us all. That’s the takeaway. Well, that, and the sobering reminder of the unmitigated power of water to be our friend – and our worst enemy. Yet, we continue to mess with it at our own peril.


Mostly, it’s just prettier pictures of what we depressingly see almost nightly on the news. Kossakovsky has zero interest in refining it into something more useful. There’s precious little in the way of spoken word, or humans for that matter. We see an unidentified Russian woman steering a masted ship through ice flows and turbulent seas. Who is she, and why does Kossakovsky find her so interesting? The only other people are stupid motorists attempting to drive across Russia’s frozen Lake Baikal, and the poor souls whose job it is to rescue them and their vehicles when they predictably plunge through thin ice.



Except for a couple of metal songs accompanying the footage in key spots, “Aquarela” consists largely of ambient sounds. Again, it’s dull, if not sleep-inducing. But, boy, are those pictures pretty! Some might (excuse the expression) be snowed by Kossakovsky’s sparkling aesthetics, most I suspect will be like me, sitting frozen – not in the scene – but in a cinema-induced coma. Wake me when it’s over.