Film Review: Manufactured Landscapes

[da]

This was a fairly good documentary about stunning art. The film-makers followed Edward Burtynsky on photo-shoots in a Chinese factory, a Chinese ship-building yard, a Bangladesh ship-breaking yard, various mining sites, and back to China for the Three Gorges Dam and Shanghai urban-renewal. (None explicitly about the Sudbury mines; I'd love to know the story of the photo above. It's my favourite of his photos).

Mr. Burtynski seems considerably less crazy than, say, Christo; and the pieces of the movie overlaid with his spoken message helped more than it grated. The music, however, tended to put me to sleep- better if they'd used more of Burtynski's lecture-circuit text to tell us more about his history and vision. (He described his work as essentially showing us some of the effects humans are having on the environment; without pointing fingers or making value judgements that would turn off some of his target audience. I'm not completely certain that's the right approach, values wise, but it makes for some really strong artistic work.)

One neat section was a slow zoom from a collection of huge earth-movers on a mining site, outward until we saw the outline of what seemed to be a huge crater of a mine, the earth-movers barely visible. Staggering perspectives, all throughout. In a way, it reminded me (in a good way) of George Lucas's vision for the original Star Wars- such as the Star Destroyer opening scene and the trash-compactor. Here, we've got real life echoing those unbelievable perspectives from sci-fi.

Here's his website, which has a short clip from the film; the "video" section has other clips that aren't from the film, including a neat set on the ship-breakers.

I'm not certain whether or not to recommend this film; if you're impressed by his work, I think it's best seen in large-format, so either on the big screen (closes tomorrow at the Princess) or perhaps on a big-ass home-projector.

Comments

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Hm, I didn't notice the guilty expressions. I did certainly notice a bit of slant by the filmmaker.

I hope he gets another chance to have a documentary made about him, eventually.