“River” (G) ***

AFTER “Sherpa” and “Mountain”, this is Australian documentary filmmaker Jennifer Peedom’s third cinematic poem about something on our planet that we kind of take for granted.

And in “River’s” 75 minutes, she, together with co-writer and co-producer Joseph Nizeti, fills the screen with “a cinematic and musical odyssey that explores the remarkable relationship between humans and rivers”.

Before there was any living thing on our planet, plant or animal, there were rivers. Today, humankind depends on rivers for the only substance, other than air, without which living things cannot survive. Thirsty? At some moment in the planet’s existence, the water we drink today, of whatever immediate origin, has flowed along a river. 

There are some movies that our law-givers should be made to watch. “River” is one such. It’s begun its Australian release in the same week as a multi-billion dollar proposal to build a dam on Queensland’s Burdekin River. It’s a big river. I remember as a child hearing about how the Townsville Mail train couldn’t run beyond Ayr or Home Hill (depending which way it was going) because the Burdekin was over the bridge – it’s since been replaced by a higher one.

“River” travels the world to illustrate many wondrous things and many terrifying things. It scared me on behalf of my grandchildren and their children. Did you know that great water storages are having an effect on the speed of earth’s rotation? That’s just one of the film’s useful observations. 

At Dendy and Palace Electric