Flow: For Love of Water
September. 12,2008From both local and global perspectives, this documentary examines the harsh realities behind the mounting water crisis. Learn how politics, pollution and human rights are intertwined in this important issue that affects every being on Earth. With water drying up around the world and the future of human lives at stake, the film urges a call to arms before more of our most precious natural resource evaporates.
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Reviews
You won't be disappointed!
Admirable film.
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.
I wish everyone would see this movie. It has one simple thesis: there is a drive to privatize water. It supports its thesis with examples and details about those examples with interviews from experts, local people impacted, and even try to involve the companies that are attempting to privatize, with images, with maps,... It also provides easy solutions to the problem of providing water to the people who need it the most. There are a few arguments that are not supported (like the one on chemicals being absorbed through our skin and such,...) by one activist. The main CEOs of those companies refuse to respond to the allegations (because they know they cannot defend what they are doing, they avoid answering the questions). It is a pretty important documentary. One of the most important doc. I have seen in years. People who criticize this doc. on form are so lame. It is not supposed to be a Hollywood movie! I doubt they have the budgets to build ramps to allow smooth filming, for instance.
Unfortunately, Flow takes an important subject and reduces it to sound bytes from community activists played over poorly photographed and edited b-roll and interviews. All emotion and no brains. The film has no coherent structure, rather it wanders from example to example of purported corporate water transgressions without actually examining the science behind the problems. I really believe that these problems need to be addressed so I'm saddened by an approach that is not effective. While I sympathize with (what I believe to be) the message of the filmmakers, they do such a poor job of supporting their arguments with anything substantive, as a viewer I'm left feeling slighted by their lack of investigation or presentation. They are guilty of all the same things I hate about Fox news, just on the other side of the political spectrum.
I remember a certain web page that featured "unseen movie reviews", based on the idea that, to make a review for some movies, it is only necessary to watch the trailer, and not the entire film (and sometimes, not even that)... this was the case of movies such as I am Sam or others of that kind. No doubt this is also the case of FLOW. One of the comments above stated that this movie certainly "had heart"... well this might just be the problem. Ideas such as this should not try to appeal mostly to our feelings. Also, in the broad context of the growing awareness about the supposed sad state of our planet's ecology(and especially, in regard to the main causes of this condition), this movie is anything but original... a piece about the future scarcity of water was just the next logical step. Like The Corporation, No Logo and Sicko, this is just another form of crass anti-capitalism... I expect this movie to be a big hit in France. I did not like the one-sided and blatantly biased approach to a serious subject that this movie proposed.
I watched this at Bloor Cinema yesterday, luckily missing the TTC strike might I add, with my high school.The movie is obviously biased and it shows -- and that's not a bad thing. It takes a gritty, firsthand look into the atrocities many parts of the world face day in and day out, eventually juxtaposing our overconsumption.Maybe it was due to the director being there (in the theatre) and letting us know it took her four years to make, but the movie had heart. It faces the problems and also takes a look at solutions, finally ending with what people are doing on our own continent.It's a mixture of life over there and life on North America. It's real.I had a few problems with the pace and editing, along with a shot of a girl being pushed down (it was shown on screen twice, to my calculations) that felt taken out of context. The movie also felt slightly lacking, like the information wasn't totally delivered.It makes you want to feel like an expert without truly paying it's part of the bargain. But that's a minor gripe.This is definitely one of those movies that everyone should see.