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United Kingdom, Germany · 2018
Rated PG · 1h 37m
Director Thomas Riedelsheimer
Starring Andy Goldsworthy, Tina Fiske, Holly Goldsworthy
Genre Documentary
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Thomas Riedelsheimer’s landmark Rivers and Tides inventively documented artist Andy Goldsworthy as he created his wondrously ephemeral site-specific sculptures, spun from nature. Fifteen years later, Goldsworthy is still appealingly engaged in his philosophical and tactical exploration of the natural world. Leaning Into the Wind is a collaborative sequel—a visual and aural sensation that takes viewers into the hillsides, terrains, and other outdoor spaces where Goldsworthy feels most at home and inspired.
Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl
The film ranges more widely than its predecessor, surveying more landscapes and a greater variety of projects. But it’s still a contemplative beauty, a chance to consider and be moved by a richer sort of connectedness than our lives typically allow.
The New York Times by Ben Kenigsberg
Because time erases or alters Mr. Goldsworthy’s sculptures, movies are the ideal medium to capture them.... The surprise of Leaning Into the Wind is that it’s just as concerned with how time has changed Mr. Goldsworthy.
The film has a wandering, lonely purity. We feel as if we've been allowed to fleetingly swim through Andy Goldsworthy's psyche.
Leaning Into the Wind will inspire anyone who sees it to look for the beauty in every gust, to admire how nature constantly rearranges itself, and us along with it. Even at its most self-conflicted, this is a fascinating reminder that some art wasn’t made to be owned.
Riedelsheimer is well-matched to Goldsworthy’s methods and interests.
San Francisco Chronicle by G. Allen Johnson
Leaning Into the Wind asks us to appreciate art for art’s sake, and that’s not a tough ask at all.
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
Even if some things have changed, spending time with an artist who's concerned, as he's said in interviews, with "the permanence of temporary objects and the temporality of permanent objects," is always worth the journey.
The objects he assembles or carves out of stone will outlive him, but it’ll only be a hint of the mind that saw beauty in the destruction, decay and rebirth that nature itself was creating all around him.
RogerEbert.com by Susan Wloszczyna
This is one of the most relaxing experiences I have had watching a movie in a long time.
As with the simpler and stronger “Rivers and Tides,” there are moments where you may want to stop the film to assure yourself you’re seeing what you’re seeing, so disordering to the senses are Goldsworthy’s re-orderings of nature.