Despite mountains of inarguable scientific evidence, in many parts of the world, some people still debate whether climate change is occurring. “Green Washing”, “Drill Baby Drill,” and “The Green Scam” are at the forefront of news pages, and an onslaught of disinformation campaigns and “new scientific evidence” are constantly being published. Most of the world is afforded the opportunity to have these obtuse debates because most people are yet to have climate change force them to adapt. Yet, since the 2019 funeral for the Okjökull glacier, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone in Iceland who has not been affected by climate change, let alone question its existence. Through home videos and the narration of Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason, and Sara Dorsa’s experienced direction, Time and Water invites the audience to live inside a slice of Icelandic family history and to understand how climate change is affecting the present day and the future. 

There are two parallel narratives in Time and Water. The first revolves around Magnason’s family. The second revolves around the destruction climate change is causing in Iceland. 

Like many good stories, Time and Water starts with birth. The birth of Magnason’s first child. A significant portion of this documentary draws upon Magnason’s personal family archive of home videos and photos in order to provide both a visual history and the backdrop for much of Magnason’s narration. The reason for including this footage is not immediately clear to the viewer, and as the film rolls into older footage of Magnason’s grandparents, we are left to wonder about the connection between the family footage and Iceland’s glaciers. It’s easy to dismiss these elements as ego and self-indulgence, yet the overall message of climate change and the unique role that Magnason’s family plays in Icelandic history keeps these sections relevant. Magnason’s grandparents, Hulda and Árni, were glaciologists who took many trips to various Icelandic glaciers (including on their honeymoon) and documented much of the footage that is used in the film. As Magnason recounts his grandparents' memories and their connection to the glaciers, he discovers a link between the dementia induced fading of his grandfather Árni’s memories and the melting of Iceland’s glaciers. Through his grandparents’ stories of love atop the glaciers, Magnason personifies the glaciers of Iceland as living beings. Grandmother Hulda empathetically recounts the unique beauty of a glacier's smell in spring, and grandfather Árni discusses how a glacier is considered living by its slow movement, the sounds of tripping water, and the creaks it produces. 

Dosa’s direction leaves the viewer meditating on lengthy close-up shots of deep otherworldly blues and the symphonic sounds of the glacier's gradual movement. By spending large portions of the film’s runtime exposing the viewer to subtle sounds and shifts in Iceland’s glaciers, it is devastating to hear their silence in the film's later portions. 

I often think about the unsettling quiet of a glacier’s death”,

Magnason narrates to break the crushing silence. 

The death of the Okjökull glacier occurs just a few years after grandfather Árni’s passing. The contrast of these events leads Magnason to conclude that while Árni’s 94-year life was long and worth celebrating, the comparatively short 700-year life of the Okjökull glacier was cut short by the damage of climate change, a fact that no one will be celebrating anytime soon. 

If it wasn’t clear at this point, climate change is the central theme that holds the various pieces of this documentary together. Between sweet footage of grandmother Hulda’s flower garden and Magnason’s children, there are sobering moments that show the reality of the situation that Iceland and the world are facing. An Icelandic news segment cut into the film shows a scientist making a chilling prediction that within 200 years, all of Iceland’s glaciers will be dead. In an equally grim scene, we get a look into Iceland’s Vatnasafn (library of water), which houses 24 tubes of water extracted from various glaciers. A lone worker cleans a transparent tube filled with water from Okjökull. 

The once great glacier, reduced to a proverbial casket, its only surviving material unrecognisable from the hulking sheet of ice it once was. 

The stark contrast between the endless white of Okjökull and its transparent remains further hammer home the immense impact of climate change.

Towards the end of the film, we see clips of Okjökull’s funeral and Magnason’s struggle to decide on words to adorn a copper plaque on the mountain where Okjökull once was. The words inscribed on this plaque are also the film's primary thesis. 

“In the next 200 years, all our main glaciers are expected to follow the same path [death from climate change]. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it”. 

The entire film is narratively framed around this concept as a time capsule to future generations. Whether Iceland’s glaciers survive is unknown to the filmmakers, but at the very least, they can provide a record of glaciers' importance and what they mean to the people of Iceland. 

This isn’t to say that the film is perfect. While much of the home footage is crucial to the narrative, it does at times feel too far removed from the film's overall concepts. Magnason’s narration is often poetic and impactful, but occasionally transitions into unimportant ramblings about life, love, and his family. Messages that would have made sense elsewhere sometimes drag on the pacing of this film’s particular narrative. Magnason also takes a unique tone in a film that is so visually loud in its opinions. Is he angry? Frustrated? Depressed? Often, none of these emotions comes across to the viewer, and thus Magnason’s narration is left feeling indifferent, an emotion that resists the otherwise powerful and poignant visuals of the film. 

However, many of these criticisms seem small compared to the film's clear triumph: the message. There is no doubt that this film changed the way I see the current effects of climate change, and while I wish the message were more dire, there is no doubt in its clarity.

Xavier Rowley is a second-year Media/Law student who has recently transferred from Comp-Sci. He spends 80% of his spare time playing guitar and the other 20% nerding out about history, geopolitics, food, film and music.