Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Movie review: Manufactured Landscapes

George Lucas ain't got nothing on Edward Burtynsky.

By John P. Meyer

Manufactured Landscapes

Jennifer Baichwal follows the much acclaimed Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky while he travels the globe shooting landscapes transformed through commercial recycling, manufacturing and industrial production. The film not only captures the astonishing transformations in the landscape but also examines the social repercussions of these changes.

Source: Cinema Source

• Showtimes and more on Manufactured Landscapes

If this film doesn't scare the Hell out of you, then you either aren't paying attention or you've got it on good authority that your time here on Earth is about to expire.

The reason it will scare the rest of you is because... well... it's beginning to appear as though our time here on Earth is about to expire.

At least, things are seen to be careening head-long in that direction, what with the most populous nation on the planet (China) expanding its fossil fuel-based industrial economy at an explosive and completely uncontrolled rate. Granted, China's massive industrialization is occurring in part because they've become the manufacturing nation of choice for insatiable Western consumers, notably those residing here in the U.S. A factory such as the one documented in Manufactured Landscapes' opening tracking shot - during which the dolly-mounted camera cruises down the length of the facility's interior, casting its lens obliquely on seemingly endless rows of workers assembling irons by hand-after-repetitively-tasked-hand - only exists because people here in the States insist on paying less for their electrical appliances, USB-powered coffee warming rings and tennis shoes, rather than more.

But enough paranoiac mea culpa Luddite ranting.

Jennifer Baichwal's film gets us to this physical and conceptual place by chronicling the artistic undertakings of photographer Edward Burtynsky, who travels the globe with his large format film camera documenting the ways in which nature has been transformed by industry. As Burtynsky is quick to point out (and as his beautiful gallery prints attest), he has no interest in making value judgments regarding industry's impact on the global geography: "I'm just trying to say, 'this is what it is.'" The photographs, if anything, tend to glamorize the transforming effects of mega-scale manufacturing, mineral extraction, industrial waste disposal, Terra-reforming, urban expansion and ship demolition: Burtynsky uses the minutiae of blight and devastation to create lyrical, often abstract compositions. Seen from standard picture-viewing distance, the subject matter displays color and balance of form; it's only under micro scrutiny that mind-numbing truths of scale begin to emerge from the carefully constructed grand designs.

With surpassing effectiveness, the disorienting nature of cyclopean unnatural terrain featured in this film evokes another beautiful (and terrible) visual chronicle of Gaia and our treatment of her viewed from a grand perspective: Godfrey Reggio's haunting Koyaanisqatsi (Life out of Balance). But while that ground-breaking no-dialog feature utilized time-lapse videography to accentuate the other-worldliness of the subject matter, Manufactured Landscapes performs similar magic merely through site selection and framing. Kudos to Dan Driscoll who scored this film in high Philip Glass style, lending auxiliary spookiness to vistas that are intrinsically spooky.

Speaking of other-worldly: the scenes and photos from Bangladesh's ship breaking beach call to mind nothing more than a Lucas-created CG landscape on one of the more outre planets of the Star Wars universe; it's practically inconceivable that such a place exists on planet Earth.

With a run-time of 90 minutes, Manufactured Landscapes opens Aug. 17 at the Angelika Dallas.

Statistics of note:

50% of the world's discarded computers end up in China for processing of their recyclable parts.

New Chinese coal-fired power plants go online at the average of one per week.

Shanghai's urban population is growing at the rate of one million per year.

Indelible image:

A grand canyon of coal

Photographer's global quest:

"I looked for the largest industrial incursions that I could find." - Edward Burtynsky

Related stories

• Eco film fest hosted by Dallas’ St. Marks School (Feb. 29, 2008)

See more stories in:

• Arts > Movies / Film > Independent Films