Time and Water

The culture wars may have pushed the climate crisis out of the headlines – nothing to see there, apparently – but this powerful and poetic Nat Geo documentary is a stark reminder that even the most monolithic elements of our planet are under threat from environmental change. An icebound travelogue and haunting photo essay, given voice by a lovely electronic score from Dan Deacon, Time and Water is an often dispiriting but at times transcendent look at the death of an Icelandic glacier, and the ways we process loss.

‘I wanted to know glaciers like my grandparents did,’ says Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason by way of scene-setting. Our narrator and guide to the film’s Gaudi-like cathedrals and cascades of ice, the poet and novelist introduces his homeland’s rugged terrain via the grandparents who inspired him. Two of them spent their honeymoon storm-bound in a tent on an Icelandic glacier. Everyone could guess how they passed the time, notes Magnason wryly. 

It’s not a comforting night at the cinema

Glaciers are in this clan’s blood, a part of its love stories, and Magnason and director Sara Dosa, whose 2022 doc Fire of Love charted the amour fou between two volcanologists, give Time and Water the feeling of a flick through a family scrapbook rather than a geology lecture. There’s grainy old Super 8 footage of the Icelandic landscapes, old photos and interviews with the ageing grandfolks. Most of all, there’s a sense of deep sadness at what they all stand to lose as the glaciers melt away. 

Glaciers are many things but they aren’t especially dynamic, and Dosa doesn’t have the kinetic backdrops to work with that Fire of Love’s magma flows offered. The photography, though, brings a sense of awe and there’s deep insights into how climate change impacts every aspect of our lives, even our use of language. After all, can you even call it ‘Iceland’ once the ice has gone?

It’s serene and spectacular, but not a comforting night at the cinema. 

In UK and Ireland cinemas now.