The Passing hauntingly travels the terrains of the conscious, the subconscious, and the desert landscapes of the Southwest, melding sleep, dreams and the drama of waking life into a stunning masterpiece. Viola, placed at the center of this personal exploration of altered time and space, represents his mortality in such forms as a glistening newborn baby, his deceased mother, and the artist himself, floating, submerged under water. Starkly yet poignantly rendered in black and white, The Passing re-enforces the notion of a permeable conduit between reality and surreality. An irrepressible soundtrack of Viola's labored breathing in sleeping and wakefulness serves to pull the viewer through an otherworldly topography. Amy Taubin of the Village Voice hails The Passing as "awesomely beautiful" and deems Bill Viola "a world-class video artist." She writes, "Some of the images... burst out of the darkness, shimmer and fade as radiant and ephemeral as shooting stars.