Is Iceland dying? Is the world dying? These are the pressing questions behind National Geographic's latest documentary, "Time and Water," which answers them with a lot of tasteful shots and home movies of someone's grandparents. The film, directed by Sara Dosa (who previously made a documentary about volcanologists who died studying an eruption), focuses on Icelandic climate author Andri Snær Magnason, whose 2019 book "Of Time and Water" included a famously sad "obituary" for the Ok glacier - the first Icelandic glacier to completely disappear. Spoiler: it won't be the last.
The glaciers are melting in the north for the same reason the global south is hitting 50°C, with all the geopolitical stability and migration implications that implies. But instead of anger or urgency, the film opts for what can only be described as elegiac blandness. It unhurriedly recounts Icelandic history and myth alongside Magnason's family tales, including interminable home-movie footage of his grandparents set to sugary ambient music while the author murmurs about how the Iceland they knew is fading away. The funeral scenes for these elders are affecting, but the rest is an inert, indulgent video scrapbook that's not exactly a treasure trove of material. Magnason eventually addresses crowds saying, "We know what needs to be done." Yes: reduce carbon emissions. But time is running out, and this film seems in no hurry to make that point.