Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World

This is a gentle, attentive and moving work of art about an artist.

Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World is a documentary about a great poet that feels like a great poem.

It’s hard to conceive of a more compelling legacy.

The film’s strength is the conversations with the participants about what Oliver meant — both what she meant in her writing, and what she meant to the world.

If Sasha Waters’s new documentary, Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World, has a slightly mushy heart of its own, it also pays eloquent tribute to its subject, delving into the depths of her work’s accomplished purity and the private life from which it came.

If you like Oliver’s poems, Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World is a documentary to see. If you don’t know Mary Oliver, this is a chance to discover something special.

The diversity of voices assembled is a suitable reflection of the subject’s reach and impact, and while a more provocative film might have included more skeptics or critics — perhaps one to account for why, as is incredulously noted here, Oliver never received a full-length review in the New York Times — Waters’ doc is unabashedly a celebration, and persuasive as such.