Rivers rarely take the straight route, and neither does Deep in the Heart 2: Texas Rivers. Narrated by Academy Award-nominated and Texas native Ethan Hawke and written and directed by Ben Masters, the film sets out to celebrate the springs, creeks, rivers and bays that shape the Lone Star state.
This documentary is less an expedition than a signposted wander: we stop to admire a tree here, an otter there, or a bend in the river before heading off in another direction. Natural sound is layered over a soft instrumental score, and Hawke’s near-ASMR delivery makes the opening stretch a delightfully soothing viewing experience. The actor is clearly having fun with the material, delivering lighter moments with loving humour; hearing him describe a wild turkey’s “dangly snoot” in the most sensual of voices is worth the price of admission alone. Hawke’s blatant passion for the project makes him a fantastic guide as we explore his home state.
The film is in no hurry, and it detours often to explain the things that matter. It goes back to the White Shaman mural, painted more than two millennia ago. It explains how aquifers form, and why mussels are known as “the liver of the river”. It recalls how the invention of the windmill let Texan towns put down roots far from rivers. On paper it’s all over the place, except that’s rather the point; every detour turns out to be connected to the others. The windmill leads to farmers drilling ever deeper into the aquifers, then to falling water tables, silent springs, and ranches and towns that have already gone dry. The 7,000 dams that tamed Texas also trap the sediment that once built the barrier islands protecting its coast. The construction keeps illustrating that nothing here makes sense in isolation. History and geography lessons alternate with the domestic dramas of mountain lions and flirtatious birds until its many tales become hard to separate.
Importantly, the film makes its case for conservation not merely on sentimental grounds, but on practical ones. While there’s real admiration for how floodplain and wetland systems feed plants and animals for instance, there’s equal weight placed on how they protect people and infrastructure. The film is clear that these rivers matter because we can’t survive without them. The disaster history drives this home: the 1900 Galveston hurricane, which killed thousands and sank the “Wall Street of the South,” the collapse of the Austin dam, the impact of the Dust Bowl, and the seven-year-long drought of the 1950s. Floods and droughts recur throughout Texan history, Hawke explains, but the healthier the river, the better a town comes through them.
It’s not all doom and homework, however. The otters’ comeback is a joy, and the alligator snapping turtle gets an entrance scored like something out of Jurassic Park. In this balancing act, Masters proves a nimble equilibrist, never letting the lectures too far outweigh the comedic relief or entertainment value.
It’s a shame, then, that when the film reaches protected lands, it raises the politics only to back away. It celebrates the reserves that give refuge to so many species and holds up the Neches River as proof that functioning watersheds, even ones badly damaged, can be restored. And while it briefly acknowledges the legal and political frameworks that make those miraculous comebacks possible, the documentary moves on before it says anything with teeth. The closest it comes to assigning blame is a vague nod to dams built to satisfy the thirst of cities, with a general “us” as the culprit.
Deep in the Heart 2: Texas Rivers needs names: who is threatening these rivers, and who is standing in the way. The credits list conservation organisations sorted by cause, so the filmmaker clearly knows who’s doing the work. Some of that specificity belongs in the film itself, where it might turn admiration and information into action. The closing note of hope is welcome, since despair only breeds indifference, but hope lands harder when we know who we’re fighting against.