BuzzFlash Reviews
Manufactured Landscapes: A Portrait of Our March Toward Ecological Disaster (DVD)
A Film by Jennifer Baichwal
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Watching "Manufacutured Landscapes" is a bit like attending an art exhibition. You may want to view it in 2 or 3 sittings. Burtynsky offers occasional narration and insight into his growth as an artist and how he came to focus on the ability of our species to create "manufactured landscapes" of industrial byproducts, many of them toxic.
At first, it may seem a little slow. There is no dramatic narrative here. But the power of the images and the interspersed narration, along with the actual documentary footage starts to swell up into a tidal wave of recognition: men and women have created an artificial construct in which to live, alienated from nature, with results that will come back to haunt us.
Burtynsky's brilliance -- and irony -- is that he can make an endless mountain of discarded tires both ominous and beautiful. There's something breathtaking about massive ships that are "discarded" on the sands of the Southeast, and then dismantled by local cottage industries of poor residents, with the parts and the scrap metal sold or bartered.
Al Gore personally awarded the film the first prize in the documentary category at the Nashville Film Festival, and his presentation is included in the extras.
No doubt some viewers may at first be puzzled by what "Manufactured Landscapes" is attempting to achieve. But give it time and a couple of sittings and it will be a revelation that will rollover you like a tsunami.
This is a documentary that offers visual epiphanies about the post-industrial world, particularly in China.
It is, if you can slow your pace down enough for meditative insight, a beautiful and haunting series of images that will profoundly affect your thoughts on the impact of industrialization.
From the distributor, Zeitgeist Films:
Manufactured Landscapes is the striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris. The film follows him through China, as he shoots the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution. With breathtaking sequences, such as the opening tracking shot through an almost endless factory, the filmmakers also extend the narratives of Burtynsky’s photographs, allowing us to meditate on our impact on the planet and witness both the epicenters of industrial endeavor and the dumping grounds of its waste. In the spirit of such environmentally enlightening hits as An Inconvenient Truth and Rivers and Tides, Manufactured Landscapes powerfully shifts our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it, without simplistic judgments or reductive resolutions.
Special Features
- Gorgeous 16:9 anamorphic transfer, enhanced for widescreen TVs
- Additional scenes, with audio commentary by director Jennifer Baichwal
- Al Gore and Baichwal at the Nashville Film Festival
- Edward Burtynsky photo gallery, with audio commentary by the artist
- Video discussion with Baichwal and Burtynsky
- Video interview with cinematographer/collaborator Peter Mettler
- U.S. theatrical trailer
- Dolby Digital 5.1 feature soundtrack
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
From an online reviewer:
Unforgettable Journey into Edward Burtynsky's Striking Industrial Landscapes.,
I didn't know what to expect after the opening 8-minute tracking shot spanned a Chinese factory's considerable length. "Manufactured Landscapes" is about the work of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, but this film is unlike any other I've seen on the subject of an artist and his work. Burtynsky has made a name -and many beautiful photographs- in "industrial landscapes". Struck by the ways in which modern humanity has transformed Earth's landscape, he seeks out "the largest industrial incursions" he can find. His photographs are fascinating and surprisingly beautiful representations of the heart of modernization and globalization.
Director Jennifer Baichwal accompanied Burtynsky on several trips to Asia, observing the artist at work and allowing a movie camera to see the industrial landscape as he does. This gives the photographs context that they don't normally have, and Burtynsky takes the opportunity to comment in a spare narration. Baichwal wisely subscribes to the same philosophy as Burtynsky in never interpreting or demystifying the photos. I was pleasantly surprised to see how many of Burtynsky's photographs are presented in the film and amazed at how well the movie footage supports and directs the viewer into them.
After photographing extraction industries for 10 years, Burtynsky turned his attention to China, where all those materials coalesce and are turned into products we consume. We go with him as he documents the rapidly changing landscapes at a factory, a village that recycles "e-waste", a shipyard, coal mine, the incredible Three Gorges Dam, and China's fastest-growing city, Shanghai. A short trip to a shipwrecking beach in Bangladesh is particularly astonishing. "Manufactured Landscapes" showed me things I had never seen before. And it is content just to show them without judgment.
The DVD (Zeitgeist 2007): Bonus features include 5 additional scenes, a theatrical trailer, and 3 featurettes. "Discussion with the Director and Edward Burtynsky" (19 min) is very worthwhile. Richard Goddard interviews Baichwal and Burtynsky about questions of authorship, perspective, what the film brings to the photos, and touches on the controversial aspects of the Burtynsky's photos. "Al Gore at the Nashville Film Festival" (9 min) records the former Vice President's speech as he presents Baichwal with an award. "Mini-Interview with the Cinematographer/Collaborator" (5 min) talks with Peter Mettler about working with both a photographer and a director. Subtitles are available for the film in English SDH.
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