I watched the movie as part of Image Entertainment's box set of Unseen Cinema. There's no way I would have sought it out otherwise. After all, what we have here is film footage of water. How could that possibly be good? Well I congratulate myself for my bloody-mindedness of watching every feature on the disc. The first minute is a bit slow, hardly-interesting figurative shots, a kind of a deliberate prelude, but then we get shot after staggering shot of coruscations, ripple effects, some barely recognisable as water. You keep on thinking that Steiner is going to run out of inspiration and then another brilliant shot appears. The dappling of the water in some shots comes as close to music as film is going to get. Being an admirer of abstract art was especially helpful for me in admiring the film's aesthetic.
Being so far removed from standard narrative film-making I would suggest that this short has limited interest to most, but for anyone interested in the avant-garde or experimental cinema this is 24-carat gold.
Being so far removed from standard narrative film-making I would suggest that this short has limited interest to most, but for anyone interested in the avant-garde or experimental cinema this is 24-carat gold.