Manufactured Landscapes (US Edition)
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Movie Reviews of Manufactured Landscapes (US Edition)
Movie Review: a great addition to any eco-doc collector. stunning!
Summary: 5 Stars
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1X2XR9JJS58NJ Movie Review: the other side of (post-industrial) currency
Summary: 5 Stars
The magnifying glass of Burtynsky's camera is set in many a motion, from micro to macro as if zooming in/out images and concepts. Its primary object is Chinese development as revealed by several instances of industrialization--production, supplies, habitat.
Repetition, mosaic, scale are few of the immediate thoughts one comes up with upon watching this documentary. Then one starts to ponder whether growth at this scale/speed can be managed OR we fast forward to fulfill our destiny as a species.
If not the documentary itself then its commented version and the other supplements on the disc could mark an(other) entry point to a debate about public consciousness round emerging issues of unprecedented scale. Running it as a public service on the great boulevards of the western world could also make one aware of the other side of (post-industrial) currency.
Movie Review: "Manufactured Landscapes" Creates a Visual and Spiritual Meditation on Our Impact on the Earth
Summary: 5 Stars
I was deeply moved by Jennifer Baichwal's documentary on Edward Burtynsky's photography in China -- then was surprised to find the range of online reviews.
First, to think of this film as "about China" misses the point that Burtynsky and Baichwal make throughout the documentary about the close global interrelationships that are reshaping vast swaths of the Earth's surface. Yes, we visit enormous centers of e-recycling in which computer components are torn apart pretty much by hand in dangerous, depressing regions of China -- but the film makes the point that the e-waste is ours as Americans. Yes, we see the oil and energy industry disrupting the Chinese landscape like gargantuan hammers and swords -- but the film makes the point that these efforts are shaped by the worldwide thirst for oil and energy in the current era of manufacturing.
The film's point is that we are fundamentally interrelated. Also, its "slow" style is intended as meditative. I agree with the strategy. This film does not preach -- just as Burtynsky's photographs are noted for their refusal to overtly preach at us. Both filmmaker and photographer are inviting us to ponder these images -- sometimes stunningly beautiful and sometimes terrifying. Sometimes we find that the truth is both beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Sometimes the images seem as distant as Mars -- and sometimes they seem so close to home that they are stunning, for example, when we suddenly notice that a mountain of gray waste includes parts of a common household steam iron.
I come to this film as a journalist who has spent decades covering the impact of faith and spirituality on contemporary life. If you're familiar with films like "Into Great Silence," about monastic life, or even "The Undertaking," a PBS documentary on poet-essayist (and undertaker) Thomas Lynch -- then you know that this is a very creative era in which filmmakers are experimenting with new spiritual vocabularies.
I would recommend this film especially for discussion groups. There's a whole lot you'll be eager to discuss in this film -- especially if your group is able to watch some of the extras on the DVD as well.
Movie Review: Slow and Boring
Summary: 2 Stars
This movie is created mostly based on slides and photos. It is incredibly slow with very little commentary. From the very beginning, it shows a huge Chinese factory floor for six to seven minutes with no comment nor music. The camera just walked through the entire floor from one end to the other. You can actually fast forward through the entire movie without missing much.
The deleted scenes and comments were more interesting than the movie itself. If you are interested in environmental photos, this may be for you. I would not recommend this to friends.
Movie Review: Beautiful and terrifying, a documentary that could well be a horror movie
Summary: 5 Stars
The camera is at the end of a long row of workers. It starts tracking to the next row, and the next, and the next. The camera operator's in no hurry, and as the rows continued, I became agitated. I wanted it to be over. To do something, anything, I began to count the rows. Seven minutes later --- this was surely the longest tracking shot in the history of film --- we were at the end of an enormous factory in China.
You want to see this movie --- you need to see this movie --- for many reasons, and scale is the first. We talk about global warming and environmental degradation and maybe we see a picture of an ice cap and a polar bear or a giant landfill, but we rarely see how big these things can be.
Edward Burtynsky is all about big.
He started, decades ago, by wondering what happened to the quarries that produced giant slabs of stone. What he found were excavated masterpieces --- inverted monuments, exactingly carved, extending hundreds of feet into the earth. In their way, they're gorgeous.
In the last few years, Burtynsky has moved on to China, an agrarian country transforming itself, at warp speed, into an industrial powerhouse. That means: a factory that produces 20 million flat-irons a year. The third largest aluminum recycling yard in the world. A dam so big --- the largest ever conceived, by 50% --- that 1.1 million people had to disassemble their homes and evacuate 13 villages so the thing could be built.
Many of these images show factories and apartments that are new and shiny, light years from what we think of as sweatshop workplaces and workers' housing. But don't be fooled. Much of the labor we see is so repetitive that none of us would last an hour. And a lot of the processes in these plants throw off waste in such volume that residents of the Pacific Northwest and Canada are its beneficiaries.
But don't jump to the conclusion that this is a film Al Gore could have made. Mass production is not without beauty --- the photographs of Andreas Gursky prove that by making us think twice about supermarkets and lobbies. But Gursky digitally manipulates his images. Burtynsky just sets up his 4x5 or 8x10 camera, takes an insane number of shots, edits ruthlessly, then prints on giant sheets of paper. What we see is what he got.
And what is that?
You look at this film --- at women putting caps on wires thirty times a minute, at people scrounging through mountains of discarded computers in search of tiny pieces of value, at gleaners harvesting scrap in a stream of chemical waste --- and you think you will never buy anything in Wal-Mart again. And that's just for openers. The computer you're using right now --- how much did you pay for it? How much would it cost if the people who labored over its components were Americans, in a union and paid a salary that reflected their expertise? And then consider the true cost of your microwave, your iPod, your flat screen, and....
But that way of thinking is too narrow; this time, it's not all about us. Burtynsky is fascinated with China because it's creating new "landscapes" on a scale that dwarfs all other nations --- in a matter of a decade, it's recreating the process of industrialization that took a century to transform America. In China, we can see our past, projected at warp speed. And in China, we can also see our future. China, China, China --- for the first time, you get what a vast impersonal force resides there, and how it works in silent, compliant efficiency, and the connection between anonymous workers and sophisticated consumers.
As Jennifer Baichwal follows Burtynsky around, she shows how he works and what he chooses to photograph, but not what he thinks. That's deliberate. Although Burtynsky should be a zealot --- his father, who worked in a GM factory, died young from a cancer allegedly caused by lubricating oil --- he takes no position on the environmental changes he photographs.
If he presents his work as a political statement, he says, it's a take it or leave it offering: You agree with him, or not. And on you go to the next exhibit, the next movie. His aim is to invite you to think about desire and repulsion, about your attraction to products and your fear of what lies beneath their shiny surfaces. After all, he points out, "We are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success."
Burtynsky's conclusion --- not shared in the documentary --- may come to be yours: ''I feel like I'm living in contradiction with myself. But I don't know any other alternative to how I live.... It's a dilemma of our times, in that there's no easy prescription for our ailment."
His solution, however tentative, is to "look at the world straight on, in a way that won't let us immediately turn our eyes away.'' Good thought. So don't just watch this movie. Share it with friends and family. And then pass it on. It's that important.