MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Water and Power’: A Mural of Southland Life

Pat O’Neill’s unique and audacious “Water and Power” is almost certainly the first experimental feature to receive a regular run in a local theater since Bunuel’s “L’Age d’Or.” (It’s at the Monica 4-Plex for one week as part of the AFI USA Independent Showcase.) The film’s title makes it sound like a documentary, but it is yet another of O’Neill’s witty, vibrant, kaleidoscopic visions of the world in which we live. O’Neill has said that his film is “very much about water in all its physical states,” but to this viewer the notion of water as a prime mover seems but a point of departure.

O’Neill has shown an eye for Western landscapes, both urban and rural, and they serve as a kind of primary backdrop for his multilayered, endlessly reprocessed images. He borrows bits of dialogue from the soundtracks of old movies; he tells brief stories in intertitles on an otherwise black screen. Yet for all the intricacy of his techniques, the density of his images and references O’Neill creates a three-dimensional living mural of Southern California which evokes a sense of unity between past and present, metropolis and desert, and finally a sense of the cyclical nature of life itself.

“Water and Power,” which has an audio design by George Lockwood that is at times as intense and repetitive as the hum of a steam plant, is shimmeringly beautiful, often hypnotic--and fiercely demanding. It is possible to perceive in it the history of the development of our region made possible by the Owens Valley aqueduct in all its profound political, social and economic implications, but this and other meanings may become fully clear only after repeated viewings. Since “Water and Power”--a title that lends itself to irony--is only 57 minutes long, you may well want to sit through this astonishing and challenging phenomenon a second time.

‘Water and Power’

A Stutz Co. release. Director, producer, cinematographer, editor Pat O’Neill. Audio design George Lockwood. Electronic design Mark Madel. Mechanical design Joe Louis. Optical printer Beth Block. Animators Diana Krumins, Megan Williams, Diana Wilson. Running time: 57 minutes.

Times-rated Mature (for complex style).