River (2021) - full transcript

(dog barks)

(birds chirping)

- [Crew] Ready for a check?
- Cello one.

[Crew] I'l just call take numbers
as we go.

[Willem Dafoe] Okay.
[Performer 2] Violin one, two, two.

(laughing)

(indistinct chatter)

[Willem] I've got
lots of images in my head.

So "of" is to be included?

(vocalises)

Okay.



- How're you doing on my juicy S's?
- [Engineer] That's a fairly easy fix.

That's what I thought,
I wanted to hear it to reassure me.

- [Crew] We're going to go for a take.
- Okay.

(instrumental music playing)

(water crashes)

[Willem] Humans
have long loved rivers.

But as we have learned
to harness their power,

have we also forgotten to revere them?

(light instrumental music playing)

When the first rains fell,

the Earth awakened.

It rained without pause
for thousands of years

sculpting new landscapes into being.

(light instrumental music playing)



Drops gathered as streams,

streams braided into rivers

growing in force as they flowed
ever onwards and downwards.

(instrumental music playing)

For eons, running water
obeyed only its own laws.

(instrumental music playing)

Patient and persistent,
it wore mountains away.

(dramatic instrumental music playing)

It looped and meandered

laying down great plains
of lush, rich silt.

(instrumental music playing)

Where rivers wandered,
life could flourish.

(instrumental music playing)

For rivers are world-makers.

They have shaped the Earth,

and they have shaped us as a species.

(instrumental music playing)

For thousands of years
we worshiped rivers,

as the arteries of the planet,

the givers of gifts,

the well-springs of wonder.

(instrumental music playing)

Rivers are the source of human dreams,

and they have flowed
through our lives as surely

as they have flowed through places.

(ice creaking)

(instrumental music playing)

High among peaks
flow vast rivers of ice.

(high-energy instrumental music playing)

Glaciers seem frozen into stasis,

yet they are always in flux.

(instrumental music playing)

Their ice has currents,

rapids,

eddies.

Crevasses creak open where
they spill down valleys,

or carve round comers.

(instrumental music playing)

And through these glaciers,

wind streams of meltwater.

(instrumental music playing)

Freed by the sun from its
slow-motion existence as ice,

running water starts to
sing its way to the sea.

(instrumental music playing)

(instrumental music intensifies)

To be truly alive, a river must be wild,

wilful and unhindered.

Yearning for the ocean,
its only purpose

is to descend.

(instrumental music playing)

(man chanting)

(water crashing)

(rain pouring)

(man singing}

For millions of years
humans wandered the earth.

It was rivers that
created fertile valleys;

made it possible for us
to settle and to dwell.

(instrumental music playing)

The first cities arose on
the banks of great waterways.

Our early destiny was shaped
by the will of rivers.

We both feared and revered
them as forces of life,

and of death.

We worshiped them as Gods.

(instrumental music playing)

Rivers inspired us as a species,

allowing us to thrive.

(instrumental music playing)

Over time, they became the
highways by which trade,

and technology spread inland,

and along them also flowed poetry,

stories and religions,

politics and conflict.

Rivers grew our towns and cities

but they were also indifferent
to human plans and dreams.

(instrumental music playing)

Fickle and unpredictable,

in flood they could wreak havoc,

and in drought

they could disappear completely.

And so, we devised extraordinary
means of controlling them,

of hamessing their force
and taming their wildness.

(bomb exploding)

(instrumental music playing)

We discovered how to
regulate and manage them,

how to run them like machines.

We shifted from seeing
rivers as living beings

to seeing them as resources.

Our gods
had become our subjects.

(instrumental music playing)

(plane engine roaring)

Qur ability to control rivers

has changed the course of history.

Droughts and floods have been averted,

arid land made fertile.

Rivers have helped make
war and bring peace.

They have shaped empires,

divided nations and nourished humanity.

(children chatter)

In many places the river is still revered,

still vital to life,

and to death.

(instrumental music playing)

(instrumental music intensifies)

(light instrumental music playing)

The worship of water is a
given to millions of people.

The river's power remains a sacred power.

It heals, consoles, and purges.

It washes away sin and purifies the dead.

It is a source of hope, love, and longing.

It is the way of life.

(instrumental music playing)

To those who live and die by the river,

their river is the river.

Essential for emotional
and spiritual sustenance.

Essential for survival.

(birds chirping)

(instrumental music playing)

(instrumental music intensifies)

We've learned to carry rivers

to places they would never
naturally have flowed.

(instrumental music playing)

Rivers stil exert an
immense influence upon us.

A global network of
transport and connection

scarcely remembered in everyday life.

Today, the world's greatest cities

all have a river at their heart.

Rivers have enabled unimaginable
prosperity for some.

For all their might though,

rivers are fragile:

easily harmed, not so easily mended.

(instrumental music playing)

Vast waterways have been drained,

and re-directed
to meet our growing needs.

We've made deserts bloom

fostering delusions of infinite abundance.

(instrumental music playing)

We've stopped going to the river.

Now

we bring the river to us.

But there's always a downstream cost,

somebody somewhere must have less.

The amount of water in the hydrosphere

hasn't changed since the first rains fell,

but the number of people on
earth has grown exponentially,

and every one of us is
utterly dependent on water.

The sheer scale of the human project

has begun to overwhelm the world's rivers.

Today, there is scarcely
a river unspanned,

undammed, or undiverted.

(instrumental music playing)

The grandest dams have
impounded so much water,

that they've slowed the
rotation of the earth.

(instrumental music playing)

(man singing}

Dams make miracles possible.

They conjure clean power

from little more than water and gravity.

They slake the thirst of millions.

They hold back floods

but at such cost.

Trapped and static, a
dammed river stagnates.

Its sediment settles
to the reservoir floor.

Dams achieve
what should be impossible:

they drown rivers.

(instrumental music playing)

(boat engine roaring)

(high-energy instrumental music playing)

Once discharged, stripped of its sediment,

dammed water brings more
damage than life.

Floodplains and deltas are
no longer nourished by silt.

The cycle of replenishment
we depend on is broken.

The power-grids not the seasons

determine the rivers' flow.

And the energy that dams generate
often fails to reach those

who need it most.

(drum beats)

(instrumental music playing)

We have riddled our rivers with poisons
in the name of progress.

Each year blooms of toxic algae
blight more rivers and lakes,

leaving their water
unswimmable, undrinkable

even fatal.

Instead of life-giving
sediment and nutrients,

rivers now carry millions
of tons of plastic waste

to the sea each year.

As ever, the poorest suffer most.

One country's affluence
is another's affliction.

(instrumental music playing)

Many rivers now fight for survival.

They gasp for water,
gather behind dams

are channelled through
cities stripped of life.

The mystery and beauty
of a wild river

is beyond our ability to comprehend

but within our capacity to destroy.

(instrumental music playing)

Rivers that have flowed for eons

have been cut off in decades.

(instrumental music playing)

Time and again,

upstream need and upstream greed

have led to downstream disaster.

(instrumental music playing)

We have become Titans,

capable of shaping our world

in ways that will endure for
millions of years to come.

For time flows too,

and we stand upstream
of a precarious future.

The lives of our rivers now

will determine the destinies
of generations to come.

We will be remembered for
all that we have depleted,

vanished and killed.

(sorrowful instrumental music playing}

We must ask ourselves,

"Are we being good ancestors?"

Rivers live in deep time,

tumbling through millennia.

They give us so much more than water.

They course through our imaginations,

renew our spirits.

With quiet determination,

they overcome the hardest
and strongest things.

(inspirational instrumental music playing)

They run into the future,

and they remember the past,

painting their way across landscapes.

(inspirational instrumental music playing)

(birds chirping)

At last, the river vanishes into the sea.

Its spirit is never lost forever though,

its death in the ocean
begins its reincamation.

Water cannot be created or destroyed,

it merely changes state,

in an endless cycle of renewal

driven by the great engine of the Sun.

For the atmosphere is alive
with moving water too,

the sky has rivers.

(instrumental music playing)

Vast Amazons and Niles
of vapour flow from sea

back to source.

(high-energy instrumental music playing)

Together these sky-rivers hold more water

than all the streams and
rivers on Earth combined.

(instrumental music playing)

(instrumental music intensifies)

(thunder rumbling)

(rain pouring)

Many cultures have never forgotten

what it means to think like a river,

or how to listen to rivers.

They know that the fate of rivers,

and the fate of humans are inextricable.

It's easy to forget
that there are places

and forces which don't respond
fo the flick of a switch,

or the twist of a dial.

Which have their own rhythms
and orders of existence.

Wild rivers correct this amnesia.

Rivers are vulnerable to our harm,

but they also possess
miraculous powers of recovery.

Given a chance their life pours back.

(thud)

(instrumental music playing)

After years imprisoned behind concrete,

their sediment is freed
10 carry on downriver,

and nourish the land again.

(man singing}

(instrumental music playing)

(man singing}

(music builds in intensity)

(man singing}

(instrumental music playing)

To think like a river

means to dream downstream in time,

to imagine what will
flow far into the future

from our actions in the present,

to be good ancestors to
those who will come after us,

downstream of us.

Look after the river,

and the river will look after you.

(man chanting)

We share our fate with rivers,

we flow together.

(man singing}

(birds chirping)

(end credits music playing}