MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES [NR]
A portrait of an artist (photographer Edward Burtynsky). An interwoven series of stunningly beautiful landscape photography. An examination of industrialization and globalization based on China’s current model. Jennifer Baichwal’s 2006 documentary integrates these ideas in a thought provoking and visually pleasing package with a measured score and the drawling background hum of giant machinery. This film has won three festival awards and was even nominated at Sundance. Sounds interesting, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, bringing these elements together and engaging an audience is where the film fails. In fact, Baichwal’s film is quite boring, like Koyaanisqatsi with a slightly longer wait for sleep to come. The concept is immediately apparent – we are changing the Earth through everything that we do – we are manufacturing landscapes. Ninety minutes of quiet, reflective footage is simply overkill and the production, in truth, is more of a film in definition than in reality. Photographs and slow pans of Chinese landfills, Bangladeshi shipyards, and Indian oil refineries strung together with limited music and sparse dialogue would have worked better as a short film or as an accompanying piece to a Burtynsky exhibit, as the heavy handedness of the film will leave audiences screaming, “Alright, we get it!” The film will certainly find a niche among the high-minded and the socially conscious, but for audiences searching for artistic and interesting films of this sort, try Jacques Perrin’s Winged Migration or Ron Fricke’s Baraka instead. –Gregory Johnson