'Time And Water' Review
Sara Dosa follows up her Oscar-nominated 2022 feature, 'Fire of Love,' with another elegiac documentary involving the elements.
I don’t know if I had unrealistic expectations for Sara Dosa’s Time and Water (it was number two on the list of my most-anticipated documentaries of 2026). I don’t love it as much as I do the filmmaker’s previous feature, Fire of Love. One thing I wasn’t expecting was for Time and Water to feel so much more of a personal film, not for Dosa but for its primary participant, Icelandic writer Andri Snær Magnason. I also wasn’t expecting it to feel so much like a climate-change issue film.
Magnason heavily narrates the documentary, which is inspired by his book On Time and Water and serves as an elegy for his grandparents and the Icelandic glaciers. There is a connection. His grandparents were co-founders of the Icelandic Glacial Research Society. He was commissioned to write an obituary for the OK Glacier after it was declared dead. I say the film serves as an elegy rather than a eulogy because it does feel more somber than celebratory of either his grandparents or the ice. He honors and memorializes them plenty, but the documentary is also slow and bleak.
Known for writing poetry and science fiction, Magnason makes Time and Water a poetic sci-fi documentary, sometimes speaking directly to the people of the future, who may be watching the film after all the glaciers have gone. This isn’t as effective here as Michael Madsen’s films Into Eternity and The Visit, maybe because it doesn’t seem terribly invested in the idea of being set in the future. It’s just invested in lamenting. At one point in the film, Magnason shows how he went overlong on a written obituary about his grandfather. The documentary has a similar problem.
Despite my clear dissatisfaction with Time and Water, I can’t say it’s a bad film. It’s a quality production, perfectly edited, and I absolutely love Dan Deacon’s score. I just don’t find Magnason, his family, or his concerns all that interesting, and I didn’t enjoy listening to him talk about any of it. Does that make the film a failure? I don’t think so. Dosa, her team, and, as far as I can tell, many viewers appreciate his words, and this documentary serves them well. If at another time I find him and his climate change woes more compelling, I am certain I’ll like Time and Water more.