Time and tide are in Andy Goldsworthy’s nature

Andy GOLDSWORTHY radiates vulnerability as he tunes into nature’s vibes, builds fragile mounds of sticks at the ocean’s edge and forms swirling paths through the Scottish highlands and moors. And it is the interconnected fragility of artist, artwork and our environment that makes the documentary “Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time” so seductive.

Goldsworthy is an environmental artist engaged with time in the purest and most profound sense, as an ongoing experience, not as something that begins and ends. Less earthworks than insights into the working of the Earth, his sculptures only momentarily rearrange the landscape. Tides and time then do their beautiful business. We may know that creation has no meaning without its opposite, destruction, but it can take a Goldsworthy to make us appreciate that.

Thomas Riedelsheimer, a German documentarian, spent years following the footsteps of the lanky Goldsworthy, who looks a little like and has some of the mannerisms of a Scottish John Adams. At points, the film verges on preciousness. And occasional flashes of Goldsworthy’s ego suggest that he may not be quite as saintly as this film would like to present him. But this is nonetheless a meeting with a remarkable man.